Blood on the Streets

For more than a hundred years, Glasgow has been right up there in the major league of big-city crime. From Madelaine Smith and Oscar Slater, by way of the Bridgeton Billy Boys and the Norman Conks, through to modern villains like Paul Ferris and Tam McGraw, Glasgow's streets have spawned a succession of fascinating tales of true crime. Films, plays and books have long chronicled the evil-doings of experts in crime, such as Walter Norval and Arthur Thompson, and the hard men who never flinched at doing their bidding. Notorious gangs, like the Penny Mob, the Cheeky Forty and the Cumbie, have also had their stories told in print and on celuloid. Even in the twenty-first century, as the new Glasgow polishes a growing reputation for sophistication and culture, blood still gets spilled on the streets and scams of one kind or another are always in the pipeline. The A-Z of Glasgow Crime is a compelling journey through an extensive history of crime and crime-fighting in a city where the illicit is never far away.
From the tough streets of the east-end to the leafy avenues of the west-end; from murder behind velvet curtains in the douce homes of the wealthy to the violent and bloody street battles on postwar housing estates - all this and more is covered in gripping detail in Jeffrey's definitive true-crime guide to a city with a notoriously violent history.