It used to be thought that no single person could rule the mean streets of Glasgow. Arthur Thompson proved this to be wrong. From an ordinary working-class family, Thompson started out as a bouncer and minder. Hard yet bright, he learned quickly. Cross him and you'd be scarred. Cheat him and he nailed you to the floor, crucifixionstyle. The gangsters of Glasgow thought it couldn't get any worse - it did. For forty years, Thompson ruled Glasgow and there came a time when his capacity for violence became so boundless that people would pray to be crucified. This fully revised edition of The Last Godfather visits places no law-abiding person has been. The gunrunning, murders, drug dealing and torture are all still there but there's much more - atrocities like how he improved on crucifixion as a means of revenge, how he created Europe's Tartan Mafia, how he invented concrete boots as a failsafe way of disposing of enemies' corpses. Then there are the ways he has had an impact on the lives and, more importantly, deaths of others - one man killed by a sniper, another kidnapped in London and tortured for days in Glasgow. Thompson died of natural causes but his influence didn't stop at his grave - which, incidentally, was deliberately left unmarked in case someone he'd had a run-in with decided to dig him up and wreak some kind of horrible revenge. This new edition includes previously unexplored aspects of Thompson's legacy and investigates the reasons there could never be another gang lord as all-powerful as Arthur Thompson - why he was destined to become The Last Godfather.

The Last Godfather

Meet Allan Linton ... a detective with a difference. It’s not exactly L.A. But dead bodies are the same wherever they turn up. Allan Linton became a private detective by pure chance. He may not follow the rules, but he always gets the job done. Until he's hired to track down a missing girl. All he's got to go on is an old photo and the help – and hindrance – of the city's biggest drug dealer and his eccentric associate Niddrie. Linton's investigation yields no trace of Tina Lamont. He's ready to throw in the towel – after all, some people want to be missing. But when a dead body turns up in London, it's clear there’s something sinister going on. And now others are on Tina's trail ... Tina ran away for a reason – and that reason will stop at nothing to find her.

Vermin

Tam McGraw was one of the most feared gangsters in Glasgow. Before his death from natural causes in July 2007, he had built up a huge crime empire which stretched from Glasgow to the Canaries. Before he died, few would talk openly about The Licensee. But now his incredible, untold story can finally be revealed.McGraw was a ruthlessly efficient gangster who built a crime empire based on fear and cunning, violence and drugs. They called him The Licensee - but not because of the pub he owned. Street players knew what it meant - Licensed to Commit Crime. Through their eyes, Reg McKay now tells the real story of Tam McGraw.Real stories about the time he cheated The Godfather, risking his life to end a dynasty. How McGraw was behind the UK's biggest coke heist and who paid the price. Who killed the six Doyles. Why the BarL Team was never caught even with MI5 on their case. Armed jail breakouts - who arranged them, who grassed them. Hit contracts, backstabbings, trading guns and bodies sacrificed. New tales and true tales of greed and betrayal. Vendettas and scores to settle with everyone from The Godfather, The Devil, M Family, Specky and Paul Ferris.McGraw did all that and much more yet was never caught. Why? He was The Licensee. Licensed to Commit Crime.

McGraw

KILLERS, CROOKS AND CONS chronicles the astonishing crimes that horrified 20th-century Scotland. Taking each decade in turn, Reg McKay tells the true tales of the crimes that shook the nation, often the world. And these crimes will shock you still. From serial killers to armed mobsters and poisoners to cops who killed, KILLERS, CROOKS AND CONS takes you from Glasgow to Edinburgh, Aberdeen to Dundee and from the Highlands to the Borders. As well as well-known cases like the world's first serial killer Peter Manuel who was hanged for the murder of seven people, wealthy landowner Max Garvie whose kinky parties led to his murder and the strange case of the death of SNP activist Willie McRae, Reg McKay tells the story of many of Scotland's less well-known but equally fascinating cases - including a police showdown with armed members of the IRA, the murder of a wealthy socialite and a committed Christian who went to extraordinary lengths to cover up his part in the brutal murder of his wife. KILLERS, CROOKS AND CONS is Scotland's very own criminal record from a century of shame.

Killers, Crooks and Cons

Murder Capital of Europe: that's Glasgow. A city more lethal than London, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Dublin or strife-torn Belfast. But what's the truth behind the headlines, the real story on the streets of Glasgow? And who has earned the city its shocking and brutal reputation? Murder Capital leads you to the city's darkest corners and to the most evil citizens of the past twenty years, introducing you to people you definitely don't want to meet on a dark night. There are assassins, poisoners, body burners, faked suicides, sex slayers, femmes fatales, grannies with blades, revenge murders, crimes of passion, killer kids, betrayals, sadistic womanisers, lethal lesbians, rough trade, drugged-up demons and more. Average citizens all - until they turned to murder and shocked the world. Then there's Worm, The Birdman, Dopey, The Equaliser, Little General and The Iceman, all up to their necks in the organised mobs until caught for their murderous ways - or until they meet with the business end of a bullet or a blade. Glasgow is a city of contradictions. People love the place and feel safe going about their daily lives. But they also know there's a dark side, places you don't go and people you'll do well to avoid. Now, Reg McKay reveals the truth about the killers, the victims and life and death on the streets of Glasgow, the Murder Capital of Europe.

Murder Capital

The armed guards and Alsatians stayed put as the prison gates slammed shut. 'I'm going straight,' Paul Ferris announced to the press, then sped off in a waiting car. Before he'd reached the first corner, the journalists were after him. And they weren't the only ones . . . Paul Ferris ruled crime in Scotland. He had links to London firms, Manchester gangs and Liverpool faces. He'd been accused of murdering The Godfather's son, Fatboy, and found not guilty. Some cops talked of killing him. Now he was telling the world that he was walking away from his life of crime. But would they let him? Vendetta tells the astonishing inside story of what happened next to Paul Ferris. And it's a story of international gangsters, hit contracts, murders, bank scams, Essex-boy torturers, corrupt politics, crackhead hitmen, knife duels, terrorists and more. In Vendetta, Paul Ferris slashes open the underbelly of Britain's streets and exposes the dark forces that police them as well as revealing the truth about what really happened to him and about the conspiracies and corruption that won't leave him alone. For years, new enemies and old foes have tried to silence Paul Ferris. But it's Ferris who's here to tell the tale while many of them are not. And some tale it is.

Vendetta

Paul Ferris was one of Britain's most feared gangsters for twenty-five years. Now, in Villains, Ferris reveals the real inside story of the villains he met and worked with, the common thugs and big-time players that surrounded him and the world of violence and fear he lived in every day of his life. In Glasgow, London and Manchester, Paul Ferris knew and worked with the biggest gangsters in the UK - everyone from Arthur Thompson in Glasgow to the Addams family in London and Rab Carruthers in Manchester. Villains is the story of the hard lives of hard men by someone who knows. There's jewel heists, crime families, new stories about Glasgow's Godfather, Arthur Thompson, a secret meeting with loyalist 'Mad Dog' Johnny Adair, the Glasgow hard man who loved bingo, and much more. And, when it comes to villains, it takes one to know one.

Villains

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