In the 1970s, in some of the most violent days of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, a group of Protestant paramilitaries embarked on a spree of indiscriminate murder in the Shankill area of Belfast, leaving thirty Catholics dead. Their leader was Lenny Murphy: a fanatical Unionist whose childhood was marked by sectarian violence, Murphy swore revenge on all Catholics, and with his gang wreaked havoc onto an already fractured city.

Not for the squeamish, The Shankill Butchers is a horrifying and detailed account of one of the most brutal series of murders in the history of Northern Ireland - a phenomenon whose real nature has been obscured by the troubled and violent context from which it sprang.