He has been a frequent visitor to Malaysia since 1986 when he began covering the drugs trafficking case of the New Zealand mother and son, Lorraine and Aaron Cohen. He first discussed the possibility of writing this biography with Karpal Singh when he visited the lawyer at the Kamunting Detention Camp outside Taiping in 1988. As a journalist Donoghue s many international assignments have seen him make more than 20 trips to China. He also covered the first Gulf War from Saudi Arabia and travelled throughout the middle-eastern countries affected by the war zone. He is the author of three books including The Tiger Who Smiled (1990), which tells the story of how Karpal Singh helped the Cohens escape the gallows by the ‘skin of their teeth’.