The Peeler’s Notebook by Barry Kennerk isn’t just a factual account of the Dublin Metropolitan Police in the Victorian era. It’s a tour of the foggy streets of the capital, those dangerous laneways and backstreets which the new recruits or “Johnny Raws” used to patrol – pig yards and mud houses, chickens at your feet, rabid dogs hoarse-barking in the shadows, opium dens on the Liffey, deserted tenements and underground cock-fighting, and Dublin’s booming sex trade with 25 brothels from Aungier Street to Stephen’s Green alone.