A Force Like No Other: The Last Shift by Colin Breen

Policing Northern Ireland through the Troubles is the subject of A Force Like No Other, The Last Shift, a collection of first hand accounts from officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. It is the third and final volume of the series by Colin Breen, published in paperback by Blackstaff Press in December 2021. This is a book about the RUC from the officers' side, for readers interested in the history of policing in Northern Ireland.

The series began in 2017 with A Force Like No Other, followed by The Next Shift in 2019. This volume closes Colin Breen's RUC trilogy. The publisher describes Breen as a former police officer with wide access to former RUC, Special Branch and CID officers, and the series is built on his interviews with them. In its notes on the first volume, the publisher records that Interpol named Northern Ireland the most dangerous place in the world to be a police officer in 1983.

The publisher's page quotes three journalists, without saying whether they were writing about this volume or the series as a whole. Henry McDonald of the Observer and Guardian is quoted praising the insight the series gives into what he called the most dangerous policing job of the 1970s and 1980s. Hugh Jordan of the Sunday World is quoted crediting "the best possible sources, the cops themselves". Stephen Gordon of the Sunday Life is quoted saying the series sets the horrors of the Troubles beside lighter stories from everyday police work.

Breen's book presents one side of the conflict, in the words of the officers who served. One Goodreads reader found The Last Shift less dark than the second volume, with more black humour.