When the Rules Don’t Apply by Gerard Shirar

In this gripping legal thriller, a principled lawyer is forced to defend his reckless childhood friend, now accused of murder, and must navigate the moral conflict between loyalty, justice, and the truth—until a shocking twist changes everything.

While growing up together in a Boston neighborhood, Timmy Flaherty and Donny Faye are as different as night and day. Timmy lives by the rules while Donny refuses to accept them. After the boys serve in Vietnam, Timmy earns a law degree, but Donny stays in the military—a decision that surprises everyone who knows him.

After Donny violates the army’s rules, he receives a dishonorable discharge and afterwards begins to work for Percy Dwyer, a notorious Boston crime boss. When Donny’s poor choices ultimately lead him to be charged with murder, he turns to his boyhood friend, Timmy, to defend him. Timmy is Initially reluctant to take on a murder case, but is cajoled into it by Donny. When evidence is discovered proving Donny’s guilt beyond a doubt, Timmy finds himself trapped between his obligation to a boyhood friendship, the morality of defending a murder and his oath to represent a client with fidelity. But what no one knows is that the case is about to take a surprising turn that will change everything.

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Excerpt from When the Rules Don’t Apply © Copyright 2025 Gerard Shirar

CHAPTER 1

MY NAME IS TIMOTHY JOSEPH Flaherty. With a name like that, I’m sure you’ve guessed that my ancestors came from Ireland and that I was brought up Catholic, and you’d be right. And if you’d heard me talk, you’d also know I’m from Boston, a place that claims it’s the home of the bean and the cod.

In fact, I was raised in a Boston neighborhood known as Roslindale; the locals called it “Rozzie” where the heads of the households worked at blue-collar jobs, the mothers stayed home to mind the kids, and most of the houses were three-deckers, or triple-deckers as they were sometimes called.

I’m guessing, of course, that with an introduction like that, you’re thinking this is a story about yours truly, one of those autobiographical sagas written to justify one’s life. But it’s not about me; it’s about Donny Faye, a boyhood friend, and what happened to him. I played a part, but then that comes later.

Donny and I grew up around the Fallon Field playground and first met in Miss Tobin’s kindergarten class. We bonded as boys do when they share things in common. Football, hockey, and baseball were the glue that held us together. Little League and Pop Warner hadn’t found their way into our part of town, so we played our games free of adult expectations and meddling.

Just out of high school in the summer of 1969, with an unpopular war raging in far-off Vietnam our draft numbers were drawn and we were both called up. By then, burning draft cards was in vogue, and anti-war protesters were out on the streets in force, but we answered the call since, for guys like us, there was no other way.

I did my time with the 1st Cav., serving in Sông Bé Province in III Corps, west of Saigon. It wasn’t the kind of war we saw John Wayne fight from the balcony of the Rialto Theater. There were no front lines. You couldn’t tell friend from enemy, and the heat, monsoon rains, and tropical vegetation made life miserable. It was a war that took the lives of close Army buddies who never understood why they were there in the first place. I did what was asked of me but not much more. I made corporal during my last month in the country—not because I’d earned it, but because I had survived a year over there.

When my time was up, I got out to an uncertain future, which was par for the course in the early seventies for a guy like me. I returned home to a country that regarded me as a baby killer or worse. Memories of Vietnam still come back sometimes in dreams, dreams about things I thought were over and done…but they are what they are.