MR Peter Pringle - who spent 15 years in prison before his conviction of murdering a garda was quashed - failed to get a High Court order to have a book withdrawn yesterday.
Mr Justice Barron refused him an interlocutory injunction restraining the sale of It Was Murder by Mr John Courtney, a former head of the murder squad.
The court move was also made against the publishers, Folens Publishing Co, trading as Blackwater Press, Airton Road, Tallaght, Co Dublin.
Mr Pringle had complained that certain passages in the book - which costs £8 and would net £60,000 in sales - was defamatory.
Mr Justice Barron said the nature of the book was such that it referred to various criminal matters investigated by Mr Courtney.
Mr Pringle was claiming that he was being accused of committing a particularly vicious crime.
The judge said Mr Courtney and the publisher claimed that the particular words relied on were not fully identified.
Mr Pringle's lawyers had made it clear in correspondence that they were objecting in essence to the whole, or a very large part of a chapter, in the book.
Refusing the injunction Mr Justice Barron said it seemed to him it would be a matter for a jury to decide whether Mr Pringle had been defamed.