Grimes Paul - Powder wars : the supergrass who brought down Britains biggest drug dealers
Here you can read online Grimes Paul - Powder wars : the supergrass who brought down Britains biggest drug dealers full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. City: Edinburgh, Great Britain, year: 2004, publisher: Mainstream Publishing, genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:Powder wars : the supergrass who brought down Britains biggest drug dealers
- Author:
- Publisher:Mainstream Publishing
- Genre:
- Year:2004
- City:Edinburgh, Great Britain
- Rating:3 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
Powder wars : the supergrass who brought down Britains biggest drug dealers: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Powder wars : the supergrass who brought down Britains biggest drug dealers" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
Powder Wars is the true story gangster Paul Grimes, a one-man crimewave with a breathtaking capacity to steal. He robbed safes, banks, lorries, warehouses, even whole buildings. Villains who got in his way were shot, stabbed, tortured, thrown out of windows and ejected from speeding cars. But when his son died of a drugs overdose, the old-school mobster turned undercover informant, swearing revenge on the new generation of Liverpool-based drug dealers flooding Britain with ?powder?. Focusing initially on Curtis Warren, the wealthiest and most successful criminal in British history, Grimes infiltrated his cocaine cartel and led Customs to the largest narcotics seizure on record, worth #260 million, putting Warren in the dock in the drugs trial of the 20th century. He then turned his attention to notorious heroin dealer John Haase. Grimes rose to become the boss of Haase?s ?security firm? ? a professional gang of rapid-fire, round-the-clock racketeers addicted to cocaine, explosive violence and non-stop criminality. In the morning they would take delivery of six kilos of heroin, in the afternoon they would send a cache of guns to Scotland and in the evening they would petrol bomb a nightclub. And then they would go to work ? as doormen on Liverpool?s buzzing and brutal nightclub scene. They would fight gun-slinging turf wars with rival door teams, kidnap drug dealers and broker the sale of swag ? lorry loads of stolen whisky and designer sportswear worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Finally, as his net began to tighten, Grimes was confronted with the ultimate dilemma. He discovered his second son was now a rising star in the drugs business. Should he shop him or not? Today Paul Grimes has a 100,000 pound contract on his head, a real-live dead man walking. Powder Wars is an account of modern gangsters told in fascinating, brutal detail
Grimes Paul: author's other books
Who wrote Powder wars : the supergrass who brought down Britains biggest drug dealers? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
John E. Grimes III
Adam Grimes
Grimes
Haase John
Grimes
Roberta Grimes
Roberta Grimes
Graham Johnson
Grimes
Tom Grimes
Powder wars : the supergrass who brought down Britains biggest drug dealers — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Powder wars : the supergrass who brought down Britains biggest drug dealers" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
POWDER WARSTHE SUPERGRASS WHO BROUGHT DOWNBRITAINS BIGGEST DRUG DEALERSGraham Johnson
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licenced or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781845968939
Version 1.0
www.mainstreampublishing.com
Copyright Graham Johnson, 2004
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published in Great Britain in 2004 by
MAINSTREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY (EDINBURGH) LTD
7 Albany Street
Edinburgh EH1 3UG
ISBN 1 84018 793 X
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Early Days
Paul Grimes was born on 26 May 1950 in a post-war prefab on a Liverpool street that had been flattened by Hitlers bombers ten years earlier. At the age of ten, he was introduced to organised crime by his grandmother, Harriet Mellor. Fresh faced but streetwise, Paul was recruited as a decoy into a notorious firm of professional shoplifters run by his grandma.
Foul-mouthed Harriet was a 16-stone gang boss who drank Scotch neat and was known on the street as The Fagin. She sat at the head of three prominent Liverpool crime families: the Grimes, the Mellors and the Moorcrofts. Amongst their inter-married members were some of the most notorious and prolific gangsters in Britain.
Billy Grimwood was a rising star on the national crime scene and a close associate of the London-based Kray twins and their clubland enforcer Johnny Nash. He was a criminal all-rounder: armed robber, hijacker, protection racketeer, killer, warehouse raider and safe-cracker.
Grimwood had married into Harriets clan after falling for her daughter Joan, an expert carrier outer in the familys shoplifting crew. Ambitious and smart, Grimwood soon became Harriets underboss. The fearlessly violent six-footer had graduated from petty crime (in 1954 he was jailed for stealing a 90 tape-recorder from an office) to hard-core safe-blower and nightclub impresario.
In June 1960, the same month in which his nephew, Paul Grimes, was being introduced to the family business on a shoplifting spree, the 29-year-old Grimwood was sentenced to three years for hiding three ounces of gelignite in the coal-bunker of his two-up, two-down terrace. The sticks of explosive were leftovers from the gangs most recent safe-blowing operations. But for Grimwood, doing time was not particularly bad news. Being sent to jail was a holiday, especially from his wife, who regularly laced his evening meals with rat poison in the hope that he would die. Long-suffering Joan rightly suspected her husband was a serial adulterer.
In Liverpools Walton Prison, Grimwood was already a living legend. Amongst the cons it was widely believed that he was more powerful than the governor. Grimwood controlled the allocation of the best cells and privileged jobs. During his sentence he smuggled in a television set (stolen from Liverpool docks) and opened up a gangsters cocktail bar in a basement cell. He fixed it for cons like armed robber and contract killer Charlie Seiga to join him in his exclusively luxurious I wing. In his book Killer, Charlie Seiga recalled:
I had only been there a few days when a con swaggered into my cell as though he owned the place: Get your gear packed, youre coming with me.
He then introduced himself as Billy Grimwood. I was taken over to I wing. I could see at once that Billy Grimwood had everything under control; all the cream of the top villains were there. I was introduced to a lot of the cons and offered a drink of anything I wanted. I couldnt believe how it was on I wing it was like a little nightclub. Most of the cons were selected by Billy. Our cells were left mostly unlocked and we had a big TV. Remember this was 1963.
Billy Grimwood was a real hard-case. He never trained like most cons do; he was just a naturally fit person. When fighting, he was so fast no one stood a chance with him, but he was dead fair in his ways. I have seen men who have tried to take him out, but they never could. He was the hardest fella I had ever come across at the time.
When he wasnt in jail, the sharp-suited Grimwood acted as a mentor to Paul, grooming his nephew for life as a one-man crimewave. In later life, Paul would repay the honour by acting as his minder and bodyguard.
Grimwoods safe-cracking team consisted of Paul Grimes father, Harold, and his uncles, Ronnie and Ritchie Mellor. Harold Grimes had married Harriets second daughter Doreen and, by default, into a life of villainy. He regularly escaped the clutches of the police investigating the growing trend of high-value safe burglaries by jumping ship onto a whaler bound for the North Atlantic, sometimes for two years at a time. Clad in rain-lashed oilskins and a souwester, he laid low, safe in the knowledge that the long arm of the law did not stretch as far as the fog-saturated ice caps of the Arctic.
Billy Grimwood and Harold Grimes made criminal history in 1969 when they stole 140,000 by tunnelling inside a Liverpool city-centre bank. Grimwood and Grimes were the first British criminals to use thermal lances to burrow through a strong-room door. The infamous Water Street Job was masterminded by Grimwood and underworld hombre, Tommy Tacker Comerford, who would later go on, according to Customs and Excise, to become Britains first ever large-scale drugs baron.
Though the gang spent two days over the August bank holiday tunnelling into the bank from a nearby bakery, Grimwood and Grimes insisted that they only be brought in for the pice de rsistance. They were probably the only criminals in Britain able to operate the burners effectively and their bargaining power paid off. Grimwood and Grimes were the only two members of the gang to evade capture.
Although Grimwood was pulled in for a grilling, he did not fold under questioning. Comerford received ten years in jail for his part in the heist, which sparked a wave of copycat raids in the capital and elsewhere. The judge commented: This was top-level, professional organised crime, carried out with the most modern sophisticated equipment and with all the planning and precision of a commando raid. Scores as lucrative as the Water Street Job did not happen everyday.
On routine safe-cracking raids, the backbone of the gang was Ritchie and Ronnie Mellor, who, despite being Harriets beloved sons, ceded day-to-day operational control to Grimwood. Former boxer Ritchie Mellor was known in the underworld as Dick the Stick on account of his dexterity at opening doors and windows with a short crowbar he concealed up his sleeve.
Dick the Stick would later perfect his breaking-and-entering skills as leader of the Hole in the Wall gang a fast-moving gang of warehouse raiders he set up with nephew Paul Grimes. Again, on the instructions of Grandma Harriet, Dick mentored Paul and recruited him regularly into his criminal enterprises.
His brother Ronnie Mellor was a psychotic shooter-merchant and compulsive commercial burglar. He was thoroughly untrustworthy and was held in contempt, though not to his face, by many of his underworld peers. One former safe-cracker partner recalled: If honour and trust were the measure of a man, there would be difficulty finding Ronnie Mellor under a microscope. Utterly faithless, Ronnie was caught burgling his best pals house after he had suggested the man go out for a drink.
Next pageLight
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
Similar books «Powder wars : the supergrass who brought down Britains biggest drug dealers»
Look at similar books to Powder wars : the supergrass who brought down Britains biggest drug dealers. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
John E. Grimes III
Adam Grimes
Grimes
Haase John
Grimes
Roberta Grimes
Roberta Grimes
Graham Johnson
Grimes
Tom Grimes
Reviews about «Powder wars : the supergrass who brought down Britains biggest drug dealers»
Discussion, reviews of the book Powder wars : the supergrass who brought down Britains biggest drug dealers and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.