With several unsolved bloody murders of establishment figures set against a backdrop of racial and political tension, Acel?Dama would make a gripping read as a detective novel.

Unfortunately for Bermuda, it describes the all too real scene in the mid-1970s during the hunt for Erskine (Buck) Burrows after he murdered Governor Sir Richard Sharples, his aide-de-camp Captain Hugh Sayers, Police Commissioner George Duckett as well as anyone else who stood in his way.

The book also doubles as an insight into the mind of author Neville T. Darrell who, despite having a Police career stymied by incessant racism, played a major role in capturing Burrows while harbouring similar homicidal thoughts against key figures in the force.

As he says in the penultimate paragraph: ?The horrendous acts alleged of Buck Burrows and others, may have looked like a Sunday school picnic compared to what I had in mind.?

Indeed Mr. Darrell reveals his ambivalent attitude to the Police from his early days when he led a teen gang in beating up tourists for money in the streets of St. George?s and set potentially lethal booby traps for a hated Policeman who then became a colleague.

Shortly after joining the force he covers for a friend who steals a carberator from a bike parked at his station.

Revealing though these admissions are they also establish the author as someone who is going to tell the truth no matter how embarrassing ? none more so than a strange episode in which Mr. Darrell goes on a jaunt to America to meet up with pals from the US force only to realise they are probably criminals who have dragged him out to help on a hit.

You often get the feeling the author has watched too many films featuring the ?rogue cop who gets results?.

As one of the few locals on the force Mr. Darrell trawls Court Street and picks up information denied from the remote colonialist colleagues who seem to neither like nor understand the people they are paid to police.

But he revels in his loner image and in one memorable passage pulls his illegal .38 calibre pistol on a criminal who had threatened Mr. Darrell?s family and who ends up begging for his life.

Word gets back to Mr. Darrell?s superiors who turn a blind eye as well as to the criminal fraternity who know he is probably just as armed and dangerous as they are.

Throughout the book one has great sympathy for Mr. Darrell?s plight in dealing with prejudice but he doesn?t appear to consider his own unorthodox actions might also have contributed to his stalled career.

The book is far better as a first-hand account of an Island blighted by racism under which Mr. Darrell is barred from being served in establishments he is paid to protect.

As tensions rise, the authorities overreact, notably with the arrest and detention of Progressive Labour Party MP Freddie Wade on trumped-up charges.

Then the killing starts. Commissioner Duckett is gunned down in his home by the man he employed at the headquarters and as a handyman at his own home. Burrows even helps clear up blood from the crime scene.

Meanwhile Mr. Darrell is encouraged to go undercover and join the Black Berets, a black power movement suspected of being behind the killings, but he declines.

Suspects are brought in but relations between local officers and Scotland Yard officers sour and leads are lost.

Meanwhile, the author is fighting his own nemesis in the shape of a bullying superior officer ? given the pseudonym of Supt. McMillen in the book ? who is keen to force him out. Just as he is about to ?go postal?, Mr. Darrell?s family turn up and he changes his mind about launching his own killing spree.

Appeals for information from the public for information on the murder are ignored but Burrows is grassed up by a criminal who had planned to rob him of cash from a bank robbery but decides instead to get the reward for information leading to the killer?s capture. Typically the money is never paid ? something which still rankles Mr. Darrell.

He reveals a high-level plot to assassinate the heavily armed Burrows rather than capture him but instead the author is given the task of snaring Burrows.

Despite the wave of killings, including the clinical murder of two owners of the Shopping Centre, the stake-out on Burrows? haunt is handled in an almost casual manner with officers knocking off after just two hours on the second night only for the suspect to turn up soon after.

Burrow is caught, but the violence continues right up to the hangings of Burrows and accomplice Larry Tacklyn, which spark Island-wide protests and riots.

Mr. Darrell does a good job of summing up the mood in the country and he also gives some insight into Burrows, who emerges as a strange mix of Robin Hood, deluded loner, political activist, incorrigible criminal and violent racist.

We learn of how Burrows trawled the streets handing out cash from a robbery and of his ruthlessness in killing those who had trusted him.

Burrows? loathing of whites is apparent, as can be seen with his determination not only to kill Duckett, but also to shoot his daughter.

Interestingly this racial rage is partly put down to the fact his mother died while giving birth to the child of a white father.

For anyone with even a passing interest in Bermuda?s past, the book (stemming from a Jewish word meaning Field of Blood) is thoroughly recommended.

Nicely paced, I found it a real page turner and read it in two sittings.

Which is not to say I don?t have some grave reservations about aspects of the book.

Although the book is well edited in terms of content, English mistakes pepper practically every page.

Although Mr. Darrell is keen to point out the book is a personal project and not meant to be viewed as an historical record, it is clear that such a first hand account of one of the turning points in Bermuda?s history would have a wider interest which would likely see it end up on the shelves of libraries across the land.

So why didn?t he get one of his many learned friends, who are thanked in the front of the book, to get out their red pen before putting it into print?

Overall though I am very glad Mr. Darrell wrote it, I am very glad to have read it but most of all I am glad not to live in the violent and racist Bermuda which he so graphically describes.

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