Powerful story of hope and heroin

Hellfire, by Mia Gallagher, Penguin Ireland, €19.10.

As any writer knows, the problem with writing about inner city heroin addicts is that it’s hard to make a lying, thieving, violent scumbag your main character and still ask your reader to like them and care what happens to them.

The thing is though, smack addicts are real people with hopes and dreams and aspirations, and in Mia Gallagher’s Hellfire, the lead character shows how ...