A historic, heavily fact-based walk through a crime. The first 2/3 are much MUCH more interesting than the last 1/3. ( )

So Jeff Bezos net worth is now $100 billion dollars. So why would any one want to know about any missing $7 million from a loosely secure Brink's depot heist in Rochester NY in 1993? Because the way investigative journalist Gary Craig meticulously details its narrative for one. Because the $7,000.000.00 are in cash, used cash and untraceable and because the heist suggests a team of highly professional operators, albeit on the wrong side of the Law. Among the Brink's security guard is an ex-cop of Irish Ancestry who helped IRA (the Irish Republican Army) hands gain clandestine asylum in the USA. It is enough to suggest to the press that the heist is a way for this organization to have access to funds that their more legitimate fundraisers does not bring in such quantity. The heist is captivating. Then comes a long surveillance of suspects by the FBI that allows the author to describe the motivations of each suspect, the ex-IRA political prisoner and comic book store keeper turned mystery writer, the Catholic Priest who helps kids in difficult neighborhood through a cash based charitable organization, a talented boxer at the end of his career who now needs his share of the heist to pay for his divorce attorney.

The trial of some of the suspects is well described in showing how even with part of the cash found, the investigators and the prosecution do not succeed into establishing clearly the causation between the cash presence in duffel bags and the presumed authors. Also 5 of the 7 million are missing. The book remains open-ended for this reason and can be best described as a "cold case" or a partially resolved case. Even the IRA's involvement may be dubious at best after you went through all the possibilities and discover that the professionals you thought had committed the heist are in fact very amateurish in how they attempt to dispose of it. The author is very attached to the atmosphere he describes, not always the most glamorous of places, from boxing rings to clandestine casinos or border towns by lake Ontario. At times, the reader will get lost in the meanders of the investigation and confuse all the Irish names of the book, but do not despair...there is a fantastic index with all these names at the end. The forensics of the murder remind also the reader that this is not a mystery novel but it is based on a true story. ( )

When I saw Seven Million…by Gary Craig on early review offered by Library Thing I was enchanted. I am an avid reader of true crime, I remember well the Lufthansa heist, as well as the Irish troubles. I was a child when Bobby Sands died. There were a lot of Irish in our town, and I remember vividly the picture of him in the paper, skeletal and frozen in death. I wondered why.
We were Catholic. There was only one Protestant family on our street, and yet we all believed in Christ the Savior. What was all this hate and killing about?
And so I greatly looked forward to Mr. Craig’s book as I did not know this story.
It is a deeply researched book about the Brinks Robbery in Rochester and the broad cast of characters that may have been involved and their connections to the IRA , IRA societies and clubs, and IRA activities both in the States and in Northern Ireland. So deeply researched in fact that I fear we lose the forest for the trees. Mr. Craig buries us with minutia that without a program we get hopelessly set adrift
Everything carries the same weight and the book loses focus. Ironically, the most focused and easiest to read as well as most emotional part is the last which Mr. Craig devotes to Ronnie Gibbons.
The other characters, the cop, Tom O’Connor; the priest Pat Moloney, and the soldier Millar, save for his time in the horrific prison Long Kesh, are curiously flat, lost amongst the detail.
The narrative, too, gets muddied as the thread disappears for pages. It is indeed a difficult book to follow, which is a shame since there is so much here.
I was struck by the depiction of Long Kesh, the abominable cruelty. How do sentient beings expect people treated so barbarically to react? And, my God, all claiming to act in the name of Jesus!
We get lost, we get so lost as human beings, so many of us are lost right now, and this is what this book tells us.
Worth the read? Absolutely.
If for no other reason than to keep that arc bending toward justice. ( )

In 1993, a group of unknown robbers stole more than $7 million from a Brinks depot in Rochester, New York. In spite of lax security measures at the facility, it quickly became clear that it was an inside job - one of the small number of people ending their work day at the depot fed the robbers information and may have even let them in. And very quickly, it became clear that the robbers at least had ties to the Irish Republican Army, then in the throes of conflict with the British before reconciliation. In the end, only $2 million was recovered, and only a couple of people went to jail for the crime - the rest has never been recovered and a former boxer turned illegal casino manager turned up dead, with no proof that the suspected murderer did it.

True Crime fans, especially, will like Gary Craig's telling of the story, though at times it's hard to sort out the players without a program - there are lots of players involved and some share last names, for instance. Craig is a reporter from Rochester who's been investigating the crimes - the robbery and murder - for many years, and he clearly knows his stuff. But ultimately, the book leaves the reader hanging a bit given that the money's still missing and the murderer got away with it. Recommended, though. ( )

A very well written book. I grew up after the heist and the IRA debacles, so it was interesting to learn about something new. It's a little hard to keep track of all the players, but that's normal for complicated nonfiction stories like this ( )