UNTOLD VIOLENCE Crime in Melbourne Today

Softcover. SIGNED. The South Yarra bombing; Hell's Angels' amphetamine factories; the sex industries; Dennis Allen: a career, break-ins and stolen goods; illegal gambling; cocaine futures; car-theft rackets; armed hold-ups; the police response. In the 1980s Melbournians lost any illusions they might have had about living in a peaceful city. Massacres, bombings, a rising crime rate and a booming drug trade, rising levels of violence all left their mark. Most crime in Melbourne was neither celebrated enough to live in the memory of its citizens, nor was it particularly well organised in the sense of being rigidly controlled by mafias or triads or networks. But behind the headlines, the television news stories and the 30-second radio grabs, was a criminal world built on money, power and violence, a world where those with guns, intelligence, ruthlessness, ingenuity and connections lived: sometimes to prosper, sometimes to meet violent deaths. The author offers a rare look inside Melbourne's crime scene - its shape, its sustenance and its people - and tells many of the stories that never made the headlines. Illus. + Index. 256pp. trade size softcover. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. V. lightly browned pp., with a corner crease to lower cover. INSCRIBED AND SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR. Vg+. Scarce.