BERT BATTLES ROSSI : Britain's Oldest London Gangland Boss

Hardback. SIGNED. ....And one time advisor to the Kray Twins and New York Mafia. Foreword by Jimmy "Whirlwind" White. 'A reporter from a television company once said he thought I’d killed as many as eleven people both here and in the States…. Bastard’. The most successful criminal is the one who keeps out of the limelight and Bert Rossi fits that description like a glove. Born in the London slums post-WWI, in the 1960s Rossi became the London representative of Angelo Bruno, head of the Philadelphia Mafia, travelling and working for him, Meyer Lansky and ‘Little’ Nicky Scarfo, both in England and the United States. Now Rossi tells of his life of eighty years of crime — from the Sabini brothers’ racecourse gang which ran Clerkenwell and Soho in the 1920s, through his friendship with Billy Hill and his murderous attack on Hill’s rival Jack Spot, to his efforts at teaching the Kray Twins that business should not be mixed with pleasure. Rossi’s engrossing story sheds new light on Anglo-American criminal relations as well as on being a prime mover in the London Underworld of this and the last century. Illus. in colour and b/w + Rossi Biblio. 223pp. 8vo. h/back. With tipped-in label SIGNED BY JAMES MORTON. As New in As New dw.