Showing titles in Organised Crime

London's most notorious gangsters, in their own words . . . The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller. The Kray twins were Britain's most notorious gangsters. Ruling London's underworld for more than a decade, as gang lords they were among the most powerful and feared men in the city. Photographed by...

In 1976, the body of Anna Mae Aquash, an American Indian luminary, was found frozen in the Badlands of South Dakota—or so the FBI said. After a suspicious autopsy and a rushed burial, friends had Aquash exhumed and found a .32-caliber bullet in her skull. Using this scandal as a point of departure, The Unquiet Grave opens a tunnel into the dark side of the FBI and its subversion of American Indian activists. But the book also discovers things the Indians would prefer to keep buried. What unfolds is a sinuous tale of conspiracy, murder, and cover-up.

Queen of Thieves is the gritty, fast-paced story of Fredericka "Marm" Mandelbaum, a poor Jewish woman who rose to the top of her profession in organized crime during the Gilded Age in New York City. During her more than twenty-five-year reign as the country’s top receiver of stolen goods, she accumulated great wealth and power inconceivable for women engaged in business, legitimate or otherwise.

Author Jason Ryan takes us back to the heady days before drug smuggling was synonymous with deadly gunplay. During this golden age of marijuana trafficking, the country's most prominent kingpins were a group of wayward and fun-loving Southern gentlemen who forsook college educations to sail drug-laden luxury sailboats across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean. Les Riley, Barry Foy, and their comrades eschewed violence as much as they loved pleasure, and it was greed, lust, and disaster at sea that ultimately caught up with them, along with the law.

When detective Maggie Oliver first discovered that children as young as 10 were being groomed, abused and trafficked for sex by gangs of men in the Rochdale area, she felt like a lonely voice calling for people to act. Banging on closed doors, it seemed that nobody was able or willing to help her save these vulnerable girls, but she couldn't just sit back while countless lives were being destroyed forever in plain sight. Instead, she launched a one-woman campaign to bring down these sickening gangs.

Richard Stratton was the unlikeliest of kingpins. A clean-cut Wellesley boy who entered outlaw culture on a trip to Mexico, he saw his search for a joint morph into a thrill-filled dope run smuggling two kilos across the border in his car door. He became a member of the Hippie Mafia, traveling the world to keep America high, living the underground life while embracing the hippie credo, rejecting hard drugs in favor of marijuana and hashish.

Joey "Crazy Joe" Gallo and his President Street mob waged a deadly Mafia civil war with the Colombo crime family, and in particular, Carmine "the Snake" Persico. And on that fateful night of April 7, 1972, in a Little Italy restaurant, Gallo was assassinated...by Carmine "Sonny" DiBiasi. This is the true story of who really whacked "Crazy Joe" Gallo on that fateful night of April 7, 1972.

Brought to you by Penguin. WINNER OF THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD 2021 THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2021 A SUNDAY TIMES AND TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR A dramatic, gripping account of the rise and fall of the notorious business tycoon Robert Maxwell from the...

When Stieg Larsson died, the author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had been working on a true mystery that out-twisted his Millennium novels: the assassination on February 28, 1986, of Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister. It was the first time in history that a head of state had been murdered without a clue who’d done it—and on a Stockholm street at point-blank range. Internationally known for his fictional far-right villains, Larsson was well acquainted with their real-life counterparts and documented extremist activities throughout the world.

As an undercover police officer with the drugs squad, Neil Woods regularly risked his life on the streets, dealing with some of the most violent and unpredictable criminals in Britain. Good Cop, Bad War is a unique story about a man with a striking ability to infiltrate and extinguish drug gangs but who, as the success of his operations grows, becomes disillusioned with the war on drugs, as he sees how it demonizes those who need help whilst empowering the very worst elements in society.

Mafia Prince is the first-person account of one of the most violent eras in Mafia history - "Little" Nicky Scarfo’s reign as boss of the Philly family in the 1980s - written by Scarfo’s underboss and nephew, "Crazy" Phil Leonetti. The youngest-ever underboss at the age of 31, Leonetti was at the crux of the violent downfall of the traditional American Mafia in the 1980s when he infiltrated Atlantic City after gambling was legalized, and later turned state’s evidence against his own.

A gripping narrative of power, corruption and greed, The Mechanism is the true story of how a simple investigation into money laundering uncovered the biggest corruption scandal in human history. When a small team of investigators discovered that a black market currency dealer was operating out of a Brazilian petrol station, they could never have imagined that their work would destroy the government and lead to the impeachment of two presidents. 

What happens when a black detective goes undercover in the KKK? An extraordinary true story. In 1978, Ron Stallworth is the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department. In the local paper, he finds a classified ad for the Ku Klux Klan - and a PO box for interested enquiries. All he's expecting are some racist brochures and a few scraps of information about the white nationalist terrorists in his community. What he gets is a phone call inviting him to join the KKK. So he does. 

Posing as a jewel thief Donnie Brasco, FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone worked undercover for six years to infiltrate the flamboyant and deadly community of Mafia wise guys, captains, and bosses. Now his eyewitness account brings to pulsing life the code of honor, loyalties, treacheries, and dirty dealings of unforgettable characters.

One of the biggest scores in Mafia history, the Lufthansa Airlines heist of 1978 has become the stuff of Mafia legend - and a decades-long investigation that continues to this day. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Anthony DeStefano sheds new light on this legendary unsolved case using recent evidence from the 2015 trial of 80-year-old Mafia don Vincent Asaro, who for the first time speaks out on his role in the fateful Lufthansa heist.

Robert Mazur spent five years undercover infiltrating the criminal hierarchy of Colombia's drug cartels. The dirty bankers and businessmen he befriended knew him as Bob Musella, a wealthy, mob-connected big shot living the good life. Together they partied in expensive hotels, drank the world's finest champagnes, drove Rolls-Royce convertibles and flew in private jets. But under Mazur's designer suits and hidden away in his quality briefcase, recorders whirred quietly.

In 1986, more people watched “The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault” than the Superbowl. More people watched the two-hour live event than David Frost’s interview with Richard Nixon. Both events were high-wire, high-reward, high-disaster broadcasts. Geraldo Rivera had been fired from ABC after fifteen years and the live broadcast from Chicago of Al Capone’s vault was to be his comeback. On April 21, 1986, at nine fifteen Eastern, Geraldo gave the signal at the midpoint of the show to blow open the subterranean vault with dynamite and reveal to the world the great secrets of Al Capone...

In 2011 a group of fishermen living on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England, were convicted for one of the largest, most audacious drug-smuggling plots in British history. They were accused of scooping up £53mill ($69 mill) worth of pure cocaine in the dead of night from the middle of the English Channel.

A rich biography of the legendary figure at the center of the century’s darkest secrets: an untold story of Golden Age Hollywood, modern Las Vegas, JFK-era scandal, and international intrigue from Lee Server, the New York Times best-selling author of Ava Gardner: Love Is Nothing.... 

Using newly released FBI files, eyewitness accounts, and family mementos, Top Hoodlum takes you inside the Mafia that Frank Costello helped build from the ground up, from small-time bootlegging and gambling to a nationwide racketeering empire. Sometimes shocking, sometimes amusing, and always riveting, these are the stories that have inspired American crime classics like The Godfather, Casino, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos. This is the man who made the Mafia such a powerful force in our nation's history. This is Top Hoodlum.