November 1983. The IRA has turned to kidnapping to fund its armed campaign in the north. The organisation has a supermarket boss in its sights - Quinnsworth chief executive, Don Tidey. As Tidey does the school run en route to his south Dublin office he pulls up at a garda checkpoint. Within moments he is dragged from his car, bundled into another car and driven away at speed. The 'gardai' are terrorists in fake uniforms. The IRA has its latest victim.
It is the start of a massive manhunt and a 23-day ordeal for Tidey. At the instant he is found, in an isolated Leitrim wood, his captors kill a trainee garda and a young soldier. After a tense stand-off with soldiers and gardai and an exchange of fire, they escape and are never caught. It is, and will remain, the deadliest ever confrontation between the Irish security forces and the IRA.
The Kidnapping opens with the dramatic story of Don Tidey's rescue. What follows is a riveting account of the lead-up to the kidnapping, the search for Tidey and the fall-out after his release. No one emerges unscathed - not the rural community where the IRA gang holds its captive, not the gardai, not the state. And especially not the man at the heart of the drama nor the families bereaved when he is rescued.The Kidnapping is a powerful, intimate and brilliantly reported account of an iconic episode in recent Irish history. At its heart are a number of extraordinary interviews with Don Tidey, who speaks in detail about his abduction and its aftermath for the first time. Equally startling and moving are interviews with the families of Patrick Kelly and Gary Sheehan, who reveal the devastating impact of the two men's violent deaths and the ongoing challenges of coming to terms with their loss.
Finally, The Kidnapping raises searching questions about the shadow cast by these events over modern Irish politics, and the Troubles' complicated legacy for today's Ireland.
