...Within half an hour, the place was buzzing. 'The airport's been shut down.' 'Bank robbers have dumped a car.' 'They've taken hostages.' 'They're tying to get out of the country.' The gossip ranged wide and wild as rumours spread. I got a lift back to the main terminal buildings and spotted our getaway car, highlighted by a ring of police and their colourful vehicles... Born into poverty in a Glasgow tenement, James Crosbie went on to become Scotland's most notorious bank robber, the man...

James Crosbie was Britain's most wanted man in 1974. With a successful business and an enviable lifestyle, he seemed to have everything going for him - until he got bored with his life and turned to armed robbery. He ended up in Peterhead Prison, doing time with some of the hardest, and funniest, men in crime. Peterhead Porridge is a remarkable account of the people he met. People like The Saughton Harrier who escaped from prison by dressing up as a runner, complete with running vest and n...

Colin Grant needs to disappear fast. With the police on his trail, a visit to his uncle in Ghana suddenly seems like a great idea. No more crime, no more jail, no more hassle. Until he visits the richest gold mine in West Africa . . . It's 1970s London and Glaswegian Colin Grant is finally free. After four years at Her Majesty's pleasure, Colin needs to make up for lost time. But when his firm's next robbery goes badly wrong, he knows it's time to move on - fast. In Africa, Colin finds a n...

Barlinnie is one of the most notorious prisons in the world and for a hundred years it has held Glasgow's toughest and most violent men, swept up from the city streets. Ten men died on its gallows in the infamous Hanging Shed, including serial killer Peter Manuel. It has sparked rooftop protests and cell block riots, and been home to godfathers of crime like Arthur Thompson Snr and Walter Norval. Barlinnie was also the scene of one of the most controversial experiments in penal history, th...

Robert Jeffrey, author of the bestselling "Barlinnie Story" and other true crime books, now tells the remarkable story of the infamous Peterhead Prison in Scotland's far north-east. Built in the 1880s as part of an ambitious humanitarian plan to use convict labour to construct a 'harbour of refuge' on the town's wild, storm-battered coast, it became what some call Scotland's gulag. A cold and brutal place, it has held down the years some of Scotland's most violent criminals and most infamo...

The criminal cases vividly described by Paul Harrison in this gripping book take the reader on a journey into the dark secret side of Glasgow's long history. The city has been the setting for a series of horrific, bloody, sometimes bizarre incidents over the centuries. From crimes of brutal premeditation to those born of rage or despair, the whole range of human weakness and wickedness is represented here. There are tales of secret passion and betrayal, robbery, murder, gangland violence, ...

Walter Norval was a man marked by destiny to be a career criminal in one of Britain's hardest cities. As a boy he grew up in a world of illegal betting, violent canal bank pitch-and-toss schools, sleazy dance halls, brothels and bars where the denizens of the slums in the north side of Glasgow slaked gargantuan thirsts and plotted murder and mayhem. Before he had reached his teens, close relatives had died as blood was spilled in the streets. As a youngster he ran 'messages' for the toughe...

Throughout an astonishing criminal career, Johnny Ramensky was the foremost safe-blower of his era. His exploits and audacious escapes from maximum security prisons also helped make him a household name - admired by some, notorious to others. But when the Second World War broke out, Ramensky joined the elite Commandos and his story became legend. Peacetime had brought Johnny Ramensky a hard upbringing in the Gorbals, a life of crime and long years in jail. War brought him the chance to ser...

To the police he was public enemy number one. To drunken gangs of yobs intent on trouble, he was a nightmare come true. Steve Sinclair was the tougest doorman in the wildest resort in Britain - and if you crossed him, payback was swift and certain. The Blackpool Rock is a candid insight into the dangerous world of the modern doorman and of the extreme methods he sometimes employs to defend himself and his customers - and to uphold his hard-won reputation.

There cannot be many cities where crime could mean anything from singing a seditious song to stealing a ship, but nineteenth-century Glasgow was a unique place with an amazing dynamism. Immigrants poured in from Ireland and the Highlands, while the factories, shipyards and mills buzzed with innovation. However, underneath the hustle and bustle was a different world, as an incredibly diverse criminal class worked for their own profit - with a total disregard for the law. The highways and by...

The armed guards and Alsatians stayed put as the prison gates slammed shut. 'I'm going straight,' Paul Ferris announced to the press, then sped off in a waiting car. Before he'd reached the first corner, the journalists were after him. And they weren't the only ones . . . Paul Ferris ruled crime in Scotland. He had links to London firms, Manchester gangs and Liverpool faces. He'd been accused of murdering The Godfather's son, Fatboy, and found not guilty. Some cops talked of killing him. N...

Meet Micky Gluckstad. You'll like him. Bare-knuckle boxer, East End face, playboy and underworld 'corner merchant', Micky's conned money off the best of them - and he's got the scars to prove it. A happy-go-lucky conman who fleeced hundreds of thousands of pounds from the rich, the stupid, the crooked and the shameless, Micky's one of the nicest men you'll ever meet - unless you cross him. Then beware. There are properly hard men and there is Micky Gluckstad. Whether on the cobbles or in t...