True Organized Crime

As part of Scotland Yard's undercover team, it was Peter Bleksley's job to infiltrate some of the capital's most dangerous gangs and bring them down. For ten years, he went deeper into the criminal underworld than any cop had before him. Meeting with dealers, gangland leaders and members of the IRA and the Mafia, he lived the life of the Great Pretender, constantly changing his identity to ensure his cover was never blown. Whilst undeniably thrilling work at times, it came at a heavy price.

On 28 November 2004, banker and father-of-two Alistair Wilson was shot three times on his doorstep in a killing more commonly associated with inner city gang wars than a sleepy seaside town in the Scottish Highlands. All these years later, the question remains: why? Over the years, lines of enquiry have been investigated and dismissed, gossip has spread, theories offered and rumours debated at length. And yet, so long after Alistair's death, no arrest has ever been made and precious few motives have been made public.

For as long as it has gripped our imaginations, the Mafia has been tied to an ingrained image of masculinity. We learn about "made men," "wiseguys," and "goodfellas" leading criminal organizations whose culture prizes machismo, with women as ancillary and often-powerless characters: trivialized mistresses and long-suffering mob wives. The reality is far more complex.

The wartime double agent with a transmitter in his cell to contact suffragettes; the doctor hanged as he smiled to the farewells of lovers on the scaffold; the con who defied a gangland godfather and escaped the bromide in the prison tea; aristocrats and arsonists.... The screws who guard Britain's prisons have seen them all. Banged Up! is the story of six of the country's most notorious jails—Durham, Wandsworth, Pentonville, Wormwood Scrubs, Dartmoor and Holloway—and of the men and women who entered their gates.

Karen Gravano is the daughter of Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, once one of the mafia's most feared hit men. With 19 confessed murders, the former Gambino Crime Family underboss - and John Gotti’s right-hand man - is the highest ranking gangster ever to turn State’s evidence and testify against members of his high-profile crime family. But to Karen, Sammy Gravano was a sometimes elusive but always loving father figure. He was ever-present at the head of the dinner table.

In 1979, the gruesome slaying of a thirteen-year-old boy riveted the suburbs of Suffolk County, New York. As the county hustled to bring the case to a dubious resolution, a wayward local teenager emerged with a convenient story to tell. For his cooperation, Jimmy Burke was rewarded with a job as a cop. Thus began Burke’s unlikely ascent to the top of one of the country’s largest law enforcement jurisdictions. He and a crew of likeminded allies utilized vengeance, gangster tactics, and political leverage to become the most powerful and feared figures in their suburban empire.

Most Escobar biographies only provide a few pieces of the puzzle, but this action-packed audiobook reveals everything about the king of cocaine. Mostly translated from Spanish, Part 1 contains stories untold in the English-speaking world.

In the fall of 1941, a momentous trial was set to begin that threatened to end the careers and lives of New York’s most brutal mob kingpins. The lead witness, Abe Reles, had been a trusted executioner for Murder, Inc., the enforcement arm of a coast-to-coast mob network known as the Syndicate. But the man responsible for coolly silencing hundreds of informants was about to become the most talkative snitch of all. In exchange for police protection, Reles was prepared to rat out his murderous friends, from Albert Anastasia to Bugsy Siegel....

Introducing the lesser-known but equally intriguing Magaddino-Todaro Mafia Crime Family! While the Five Families of the New York Mafia often steal the spotlight, delve into the captivating world of Buffalo's criminal underworld with Mafia Library's newest non-fiction crime audiobook.

The dramatic true story of two brothers living parallel lives on either side of the US-Mexico border - and how their lives converged in a major criminal conspiracy.

Here's what we now know: John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas by Mafia contract killers hired by Louisiana mob boss Carlos Marcello. Kennedy was killed in that city because it was the only place in the country where a crime of that magnitude could be committed without fear of punishment. Long-time local district attorney Henry Wade, an LBJ crony who would have sole jurisdiction over the prosecution of those responsible, had been corrupted by the local Civello crime family. Lyndon B. Johnson, while a U.S. senator during the 1950s, had accepted bribes from the same mobsters so that they could avoid deportation.

In 1942, a rational fear was mounting that New York Harbor was vulnerable to sabotage. If the waterfront was infested with German and Italian agents then the US Navy needed a recourse just as insidious to secure it. Naval intelligence officer Commander Charles Radcliffe Haffenden had the solution: recruit as his own spies, members of La Cosa Nostra. Pier to pier, no one terrified the longshoremen, stevedores, shopkeepers, and boat captains along the harbor better than the Mafia gangs of New York, who controlled the docks in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Joey O'Callaghan was just 18 years old when he became a ghost - the youngest ever person to be signed up to the Witness Protection Programme. Groomed into a drug gang from the age of 10, a cold-blooded assassination sickened him to his core, and he broke the golden bond of gangland silence. His evidence won murder convictions against two of the most violent drug bosses in Ireland.

Criminal exploits, secret agent intrigue, and clever disguises fill the pages of Francois Eugene Vidocq’s memoirs. A legendary figure in history, Vidocq is known as the first detective and an inspiration to great writers such as Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo and Edgar Allen Poe. As a player in the criminal underworld, Vidocq is a master of disguises and an accomplished thief, eventually turning his unlawful talents toward catching criminals as the first French chief of secret police.

Midcentury Los Angeles: A city sold to the world as "the white spot of America", a land of sunshine and orange groves, Midwestern values, and Hollywood stars, protected by the world's most famous police force, the Dragnet-era LAPD. Behind this public image lies a hidden world of "pleasure girls" and crooked cops, ruthless newspaper tycoons, corrupt politicians, and East Coast gangsters on the make. Into this underworld came two men - one L.A.'s most notorious gangster, the other its most famous police chief - each prepared to battle the other for the soul of the city.

Testimonios de sobrevivientes y secuestradores. El secuestro en México es un delito que ha revolucionado y crecido de forma voraz: lo mismo destroza la vida de personas millonarias que de hombres y mujeres con escasos recursos.

Un épisode sans retenues de la façon dont les médias du Québec, au Canada, ainsi que les agences gouvernementales ont amplifié la rumeur et les insinuations pour tenir un tribunal fantoche visant à détruire les affaires, la réputation et la vie de Marcel Pontbriand. Il s'agit de la Partie 2 de la série Cowboy De La Route qui se concentre sur la trame de fond canadienne-française sur la manière dont le sensationnalisme a abouti à des montagnes russes émotionnelles qui ont détruit la vie de nombreuses familles québécoises

En diciembre de 1972, varios encapuchados secuestraron a Jean McConville, una viuda de 38 años con 10 hijos a su cargo. En aquel barrio católico de Belfast todos intuían que se trataba de una represalia del IRA, pero nadie se atrevía a decirlo por el terror y paranoia imperantes en la época más caliente del conflicto. El crimen no empezó a resolverse hasta 2003, cinco años después de los acuerdos de paz del Viernes Santo, al ser desenterrados los restos mortales de McConville en una playa solitaria.

In the long annals of sports and crime, no story compares to the one that engulfed the Luckman family in 1935. As 18-year-old Sid Luckman made headlines across New York City for his high school football exploits at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, his father, Meyer Luckman, was making headlines in the same papers for a very different reason: the gangland murder of his own brother-in-law. Amazingly, the connection between sports celebrity son and mobster father was studiously ignored by the press and ultimately overlooked for eight decades.

In this fascinating and comprehensive examination of the underside of globalization, Moises Naim illuminates the struggle between traffickers and the hamstrung bureaucracies trying to control them. From illegal migrants to drugs to weapons to laundered money to counterfeit goods, the black market produces enormous profits that are reinvested to create new businesses, enable terrorists, and even to take over governments. Naim reveals the inner workings of these amazingly efficient international organizations and shows why it is so hard - and so necessary - to contain them.