Richards Stephen

Meet the hardest men from a country where the streets are the most dangerous and the gangsters and criminals are the scariest in Britain. These faces have seen it all: the guns, the knives, the fights and the toughest prisons. This book will take you deep inside the rough, mad, bad, drug-infested, cut-throat, back-stabbing world of the Scottish prison system, bringing to light the last fifty years of infamous incidents that have taken place behind bars in some of the highest security prisons. With a frightening in-depth look at the most notorious prisons and institutions and the most daunting and fearsome of inmates, this compulsive guide covers them all from murderers to armed-robbers, a female crime clan with a family feel to it and some of the most notorious cases in Scottish criminal history.

Viv Graham and Lee Duffy led parallel lives as pub and club enforcers, raging their gangland turf wars with a fierce frenzy of brutality and unremitting cruelty. This frank and astonishing book by underworld authority Stephen Richards is a riveting double portrait of two of the North East's most feared men whose bloody rivalry was cut short when they each met horrifically violent ends. With a frightening capacity for extreme violence, Tyneside protection hardman Viv struck fear into the hearts of his enemies, yet his benevolence to local charities and schemes to keep kids away from drugs and crime was well known - any patch that Viv protected was guaranteed free of both. He was the ultimate maverick trouble-shooter. Teeside drugs enforcer Lee Duffy had half his foot shot off in an assassination attempt and his skull beaten with a crowbar, but his streetwise instinct was unmatched. With unprecedented access to friends, family and associates, Stephen Richards dispels many of the myths surrounding these legendary figures.

Jimmy Holland was born into a family suffering at the hands of their drunk and abusive father. At the age of just two weeks, he was placed into care. The beginning of a life lived in a constantly changing environment of homes, authorities and institutions began. Let down and frequently abused, it wasn't long before Jimmy strayed onto the wrong side of the tracks. Before long, the mould for a problem child was set. He quickly turned from substance abuse to drug use and, in turn, to crime - his only means of an escape. An inevitable lifetime of crime faced him and he soon became associated with the ringleaders of an infamous gang responsible for prison riots and hostage taking. A heart-felt, shocking and despairing insight into life as a state-raised boy, Lost in Care is the heart-rending tale of a man who has lost his childhood and also lost his way.

Over the last two decades, Brian Cockerill has ruled his world with an iron fist. Using nothing but his hands as weapons, he has patrolled the streets, clubs and raves of Britain in order to keep order and to 'tax' those whose ill-gotten gains he sees fit to take a share of. Drug dealers and shady club promoters everywhere know that, if The Taxman is in town, it's time to pay up or get out. All know of the appalling violence this man can exert on his enemies, and of the incredible presence of body and mind that he possesses. Yet despite his appalling record of aggression, Brian is a man who lives by rules and respect - balanced yet unpredictable, he has never used weapons, and those who have used arms against him have barely lived to regret it. The facts of his life are as amazing and awe-inspiring as they are true.