Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up with Rupert Murdoch by Nick Davies Chatto & Windus It did not seem a big story when in 2006 a journalist and a private investigator were arrested for the illegal phone hacking of three Buckingham Palace staff. The News of the World dismissed the journalist as a rogue. However, Nick Davies of The Guardian suspected the hacking had editorial consent and started on the track which would lead to the humiliation of Rupert Murdoch before a parliamentary commission and closure of News of the World . Hack Attack is an account of Davies' tenacious investigation with its false tracks, mistakes, strokes of luck and Murdoch counterattacks. For a long time many agreed with London mayor Boris Johnson that the accusations were "codswallop". For years police and politicians had been too chummy with Murdoch's newspapers or too afraid to really scrutinise their methods; even the Press Complaints Commission came out on Murdoch's side. But some journalists, lawyers and celebrities such as Sienna Miller joined Davies' campaign - and attitudes changed dramatically with the disclosure in 2011 that News of the World had hacked the phones of the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, 13, as well as the phones of relatives of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. This led to Murdoch, his son James and other executives appearing before a parliamentary commission. The defence was that they had known nothing. But the commission decided that News of the World and other Murdoch papers such as The Sun had employed private investigators systematically to hack phones and also emails for information which boosted sales even if it ruined lives. Davies describes what he believes was going on in the Murdoch empire: News of the World journalists were not only hacking outsiders and rival papers but also each other, Scotland Yard and political parties. He is kinder to those on his side, for instance, in his treatment of Max Mosley who bankrolled many claimants. He does not mention the Mosley family's Nazi sympathies or his sex parties but blames "foreign billionaire" Murdoch for all the evils of Fleet Street and for representing what, for Davies, is the underlying evil: neo-liberalism. Murdoch had a point when he said tabloid journalism had always been roughhouse. Indeed, it now has a more toxic potential because of its unprecedented ability to conduct surveillance of private lives and also keen competition from private users of the internet. It is one of the issues spotlighted by this thorough and exciting book which indicates the need for impartial regulatory bodies, and police and politicians with guts.