Product Description

"Crimelord" is the gripping life story of elusive multimillionaire gangster Tam McGraw. A notorious criminal kingpin, McGraw has risen from extreme poverty in the East End of Glasgow to become one of Scotland's wealthiest men. When hash started to flood into Scotland from the late 1980s onwards, suspicion centred on McGraw, leader of the infamous Barlanark Team. After a two-year surveillance operation, police discovered the drug had been hidden in buses carrying young footballers and deprived Glasgow families on free holidays abroad. It was a scam reminiscent of the movie "The Italian Job", only this time Scots kids had been sitting on hash worth over GBP40 million. Police claimed McGraw was the financier and mastermind but in 1998 a jury declared him innocent while other suspects were jailed. As McGraw refuses to discuss his life publicly, his remarkable tale is told through friends, fellow crooks and the occasional rival. It is an outrageous, often hilarious, true gangster story.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #106606 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From the Publisher
A controversial exposé of Tam McGraw, one of Scotland’s most wealthy and infamous gangsters

About the Author
David Leslie has worked for the News of the World since 1970. Since then, he has covered scores of major stories, including the tragedies of Zeebrugge, Piper Alpha, Lockerbie and Dunblane. He has been based in Glasgow since 1994, concentrating on crime and major investigations.

Customer Reviews

Is this book really about Tam McGraw?
I was interested to read about such an enigmatic figure as Tam McGraw, having heard so many others holding forth on the subject (Reg McKay, Paul Ferris et al). I was hoping that this book would cast some light on McGraw's shadowy world. However, the book is largely pre-occupied with smuggling operations undertaken by the Tartan Mafia back in the 90s, with occasional allusions to McGraw's involvement.

There are some interesting anecdotes, though they must be taken with a pinch of salt considering the sources. Unfortunately there are some extensive grey areas. For example, Paul Ferris is rarely mentioned, which considering recent events is unusual. The tone of the book is sympathetic toward McGraw and his henchmen, leaving one with a sense of some modern day Don Vito Corleone figure, a gangster with honour. There may or may not be some truth in this but I was left wondering just how much of a hidden hand McGraw himself may have had in the writing of this work. After all his reputation has been extensively maligned both by fellow gangsters and the media.

On the plus side, as a mildly entertaining true crime biopic of scottish smugglers in the Costa Del Sol of the 90s, this book is worth a read. The title though is disingenuous. Don't expect to have any more of a sense of who "The Licensee" actually is at the end than you had at the beginning.

Glamourised, Inaccurate, greatly fictionalised
OK, I may not know Tam McGraw personally (thankfully), but having a Father who is a senior police officer in Glasgow who dealt with McGraw, Ferris and Arthur Thompson over the years I can safely say that a large part of this book is both exaggerated and inaccurate. To portray Tam McGraw as the "Robin Hood" of Barlanark is just plain stupid. Reading this book gives you a completely wrong point of view as it glamourises (falsely) the thugs involved. The author's descriptions of the thugs and police officers are also completely inaccurate. To top things off the author gives credit to McGraw and his "crew" for jobs that WERE carried out by Arthur Thompson and his "crew".

This book paints a picture of McGraw as some sort of powerhouse of crime, stronger than Arthur Thompson, but let me just point out McGraw is constantly arrested and has done some time, yet Arthur Thompson was only arrested once falsely for a fur coat that it was alleged to have been stolen, but was in fact legitimately purchased. He did six months for that. When you consider the length of Thompsons career and the fact that he happily dealt with and had the respect of the Kray twins, it truly shows who the real "Wiseguy" and "Crimelord" was. The author has been duped and mislead too much by the criminals he has interviewed.

This book should be read as a work of fiction because what truths are given they are either inaccurate or biased from the criminals point of view.

A positive point I would like to voice though is the fact that considering it was the author’s first book is was well written considering all the factors mentioned above.

Nonsense
I looked forward to reading this book with great relish. Sure that i would be about to read some previously unknown interesting facts regarding Thomas McGraw the self-proclaimed Mr Big and suspected super-grass. I was totally disappointed and unimpressed with the books content. What i read was little more than a concoction of half-truths, complete fabrication and mis-informed gangland gossip coupled with stories i had read in the press.

The author i suppose did his best with the information gleaned from interviewing the friends and associates of Mr McGraw. I appreciate it would have been a hard task to find any semblance of truth among the author notes taken from the motley bunch of miscreants that surround McGraw. The author if he had tried harder could i am quite sure, have sought out and interviewed some neutral players from the Glasgow criminal fraternity, thus giving his book more balance and perhaps something approaching truth.

If you are from the Glasgow area and suffer from insomnia this book may help you through the night, but i doubt it. My advice would be to save your cash and give this book a miss, unless fairy-tales are your favourite book genre.