Grab the Devil's Tail

This is a first-person account of Patrick Michael Mooney's life of crime and his failed attempts to redeem himself by becoming a police informant. With unusual honesty and a quirky sense of humour he relates how his father's harshness and his teenaged rebelliousness led him into heavy drug use and bizarre drug-induced behaviour. A judge sends his to a Massachusetts psychiatric assessment unit from which he escapes repeatedly until he is placed in a secure ward housing seriously psychotic patients. His heavy drug use and drug results in him being confine in some of the harshest prisons in the U.S. and Canada. His romance with a beautiful model ends tragically when a Toronto Metro policeman shoots her 'accidentally'. Upon his release Patrick launches into a crime spree that ends with him being charged with multiple crimes. He skips bail and hides in a remote work camp north-eastern British Columbia. He is recaptured and while awaiting a court hearing in Calgary he masterminds a daring escape, steals a car and begins a cross-Canada crime spree with an increasingly dangerous fellow escapee. They are recaptured and both sent to Dorchester Penitentiary where his dangerous fellow escapee plots to have him killed. Upon his release from prison he finds it difficult to adjust to life outside prison until he undertakes dangerous assignments as a police informant. His story ends with him being pursued by those seeking to claim contract money from the same criminals that he worked to put into prison.