Murray's book is the product of a lifelong interest in the event, infamously known as the Wildgoose Lodge murders, which took place near the Louth/Monaghan border in 1816.Perhaps best known because of its inclusion in William Carleton's Traits and Stories qf the Irish Peasantry, Wildgoose Lodge refers to an attack on the home of a farmer, Edward Lynch, in Reaghstown, Co. Louth that killed eight people, among them Lynch and his son-in-law, Thomas Rooney. The occurrence was notable for the ferocity and viciousness with which it was perpetrated and the trials that followed the outrage. Eighteen men were hanged for the burning and various corpses were gibbeted in the local area for some time afterwards. Both the victims and the perpetrators of the Wildgoose Lodge burnings were Catholics. The series of events surrounding Wildgoose Lodge caused outrage at local, regional and state level; the authorities were determined to crack down on the perpetrators of the horrific attack. The intended victims of the attack, Edward Lynch and Thomas Rooney, were Catholic farmers who had previously successfully prosecuted an attack on their property, which led to the hanging of three men. The burning of Wildgoose Lodge was intended as a reprisal for Lynch's actions. Initially, the burnings elicited local sympathy and horror at the attack. However, the sheer number of men arrested, tried and sentenced to death for the burnings, as well as the anomalies which appeared in some of the trials, ensured that local popular sympathy soon turned against the government, who were seen as using the trials to rid the area of perceived trouble makers. This popular sympathy was reinforced by the widespread belief that not all of the men hanged for the crime were involved in the burning.