Good Cop, Bad War

Calling upon the gripping firsthand accounts from those on both sides of the battle - the cops and the gangsters - as well as Neil Woods' experiences as an undercover drugs detective, Drug Wars will build a complex, authentic and terrifying picture of the reality of the drug war in Britain. Beginning with the Misuse of Drugs Act in 1971, we watch decades of violence, racial tension, organised crime and a monumental increase in addiction unfold. We see the birth of rave music and dance culture and yet even more tabloid hysteria. 

Twenty years undercover - one man's true story of life as an undercover cop. A must-listen for fans of Donnie Brasco. For over 20 years, Joe Carter has worked for the police as an undercover cop. He travelled the globe on different passports. He fraternised with thieves and international drugs and arms dealers. He worked alongside the most dangerous criminals. Always fearing that this life would come crashing down around him at any point.

The difference between a good detective and a successful criminal is paper thin - CID induction lecture. Welcome to the Criminal Investigation Department, aka the Crime Factory. Where the cops take and sell drugs (or steal them from the police storeroom); where they fit up, 'verbal' and harrass criminals, fight each other, drink-drive, abuse search warrants, have sex with sources, stab one another in the back (metaphorically), put each other under surveillance; abuse every aspect of their power...

Fighting on the frontline of the war against crime, Cam Addicott was one of the very few hard-boiled and highly-experienced surveillance operatives to get called up to the secretive and elite Alpha Projects unit - a group of dedicated undercover customs officers. Alpha Projects unit hunted the UK's most dangerous criminals by extraordinary means – starting with the interception and decoding of their phone calls. Cam soon knew the lives of the people he hunted better than they knew each other.

A jaw-dropping account of life as a prison officer in one of the country's most notorious jails. Neil ‘Sam’ Samworth spent 11 years working as a prison officer in HMP Manchester, aka Strangeways. A tough Yorkshireman with a soft heart, Sam had to deal with it all - gangsters and gangbangers, terrorists and psychopaths, addicts and the mentally ill. Men who should not be locked up and men who should never be let out. Strangeways is a shocking and at times darkly funny account of life in a high-security prison. 

British organised crime has changed beyond all recognition over the last five years. Youth violence, the drug trade and rising levels of gun crime are rarely out of the news. Beginning on the troubled streets of the inner cities, Gang Land takes its readers on a journey up through the underworld hierarchy until it finally reaches the very highest levels, occupied by shadowy ‘Mr Big’ characters.

After a SWAT team smashed down stock-market millionaire Shaun Attwood's door, he found himself inside of Arizona's deadliest jail and locked into a brutal struggle for survival. Shaun's hope of living the American Dream turned into a nightmare of violence and chaos, when he had a run-in with Sammy the Bull Gravano, an Italian Mafia mass murderer. Join Shaun on a harrowing voyage into the darkest recesses of human existence.

On December 6, 1995, three key members of the infamous Essex Boys gang were lured to a deserted farm track on the pretense of planning a robbery. As the trio sat in their Range Rover, two gunmen approached the open rear door of the vehicle. Moments later, the first shots rang out signaling the start of a swift, yet bloody massacre. When the weapons fell silent, the three men lay dead.

He was the Western convert who would plunge deep inside al-Qaeda. He named his first son Osama after 9/11 and became a Jihadist. But then - after a sudden loss of faith - Morten Storm made a life-changing decision. He became a double agent and joined the CIA, MI6 and MI5. Filled with hair-raising close calls and deception, Storm's story builds to the climactic finale when he must betray his friend and mentor al-Awlaki - al-Qaeda's biggest threat to the West.

Shaun Attwood arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, a penniless business graduate from a small industrial town in England. Within a decade, he became a stock-market millionaire. But he was leading a double life. After taking his first Ecstasy pill at a rave in Manchester as a shy student, Shaun became intoxicated by the party lifestyle that would change his fortune. Years later, in the Arizona desert, Shaun became submerged in a criminal underworld, throwing parties for thousands of ravers and running an Ecstasy ring in competition with the Mafia mass murderer Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano.

In a ranch south of Texas, the man known as The Executioner dumps 500 body parts in metal barrels. In Brazil's biggest city, a mysterious prisoner orders hit men to gun down 41 police officers and prison guards in two days. In Southern Mexico a meth maker is venerated as a saint while enforcing Old Testament justice on his enemies. A new kind of criminal kingpin has arisen: part CEO, part terrorist, and part rock star, unleashing guerrilla attacks, strong-arming governments, and taking over much of the world's trade in narcotics, guns, and humans.

On 22 February 2006, GBP53 million was stolen from a cash warehouse belonging to the Securitas company in Tonbridge, Kent. In terms of value, the robbery puts previous British capers, such as the Great Train Robbery, in the shade. This was a crime notable for its audacity, carried out by an unlikely crew of players that included a used car salesman, two Albanian casual workers and a roofer. Five men were convicted at the Old Bailey in January 2008, which attracted nationwide media coverage.

Blow is the unlikely story of George Jung's roller-coaster ride from middle-class high school football hero to the heart of Pablo Escobar's Medellín cartel - the largest importer of the United States cocaine supply in the 1980s. Jung's early business of flying marijuana into the United States from the mountains of Mexico took a dramatic turn when he met Carlos Lehder, a young Colombian car thief with connections to the then newly-born cocaine operation in his native land. Together they created a new model for selling cocaine.

American Desperado is possibly the most jaw-dropping, event-filled, adrenaline-soaked criminal autobiography ever written. Like a real-life Scarface Jon was born into the upper levels of the Gambino crime family and witnessed his first murder at age seven. He became a one-man juvenile crime wave before joining an assassination squad in Vietnam.

In the boot were six homemade pipe bombs, all linked to detonate at the same time from a single call on a brand-new pay-as-you-go phone found on the target. Special Branch also found Chinese Type 56 assault rifles with eight full magazines of ammunition. His target was a local school. He planned to attack two coaches of teenagers returning home after a school trip to France. Approximately 60 children, their accompanying teachers and their waiting parents. He was going to kill them all.