Collared JPG is the artwork | dark grey background | white lettering

Collared is a great read that will leave you thinking and measuring yourself long after you’ve put it down.”
-Larry Kirwan, author of Liverpool Fantasy and leader of Black 47

The sex abuse scandals of the Roman Catholic Church have been dominating headlines for decades with searing statistics: 11,000 allegations of sexual abuse by priests who served during the last 50 years. The same feelings of anger, betrayal, and redemption that have gripped people of faith have been captured in “Collared,” a provocative tale of suspense.

Mike Farragher, a nationally recognized columnist with the Irish Voice released Collared, a novel published back in 2004 set in the gritty streets of Jersey City that could have easily been ripped from today’s headlines.

Collared is the story of two brothers abused by their parish priest. Mitch becomes a reporter tearing through the shroud of secrecy cloaking the church. He exposes the rampant pedophilia rotting the foundation of parish communities and the diocese’s ruthless attempts to avoid scandal at all costs. His brother Barry is a priest dedicating his life to making a difference in the lives of the young people in his care. He gets caught in the media frenzy created by Mitch’s columns and becomes the pawn of a Cardinal who will stop at nothing to retain his grip on power.

A vicious killer emerges from the shadows of the church and strikes at the clergy exposed in Mitch’s articles. A trail of bodies leads the brothers to the murderer and an explosive confrontation with the man who took their innocence all those years ago.

“If Quentin Tarantino and Tony Soprano showed up with an axe to grind in your parish, it might look something like this,” jokes Farragher of the fast-paced thriller that grabs the reader and doesn’t let go until the thrilling climax

In preparing the novel, Farragher interviewed parents of abuse victims and abuse survivors. His research brought a cookie-cutter pattern of behavior that fit a clergy near and dear to his own family.

“It was a mind-blower to say the least,” says Farragher. “The anger, betrayal, and flirtation with forgiveness that I wrote about in the third person for the purposes of the novel are now very much ‘first person feelings’ that I was going through just as the book went to the press. Without the dead bodies, of course.”

Order “Collared” through AuthorHouse Books: https://www.authorhouse.com/en/search?query=collared