Product Description

Viv Graham and Lee Duffy led parallel lives as pub and club enforcers, raging their gangland turf wars with a fierce frenzy of brutality and unremitting cruelty. This frank and astonishing book by underworld authority Stephen Richards is a riveting double portrait of two of the North East's most feared men whose bloody rivalry was cut short when they each met horrifically violent ends. With a frightening capacity for extreme violence, Tyneside protection hardman Viv struck fear into the hearts of his enemies, yet his benevolence to local charities and schemes to keep kids away from drugs and crime was well known - any patch that Viv protected was guaranteed free of both. He was the ultimate maverick trouble-shooter. Teeside drugs enforcer Lee Duffy had half his foot shot off in an assassination attempt and his skull beaten with a crowbar, but his streetwise instinct was unmatched. With unprecedented access to friends, family and associates, Stephen Richards dispels many of the myths surrounding these legendary figures.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #137069 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Stephen Richards, no-holds-barred investigative journalist and spokesman for the underworld, is a regular contributor of gangland news to numerous websites. He is the author of several successful true crime books, many of which have been serialised in the national press. Richards has his own management company, Crimebiz, representing infamous and notorious underworld figures. He is often sought out by production and film companies and has advised on Panorama and Trevor McDonald's Tonight to name a few. He is also involved in producing and directing crime documentaries and big-screen gangster movie scripts.

Customer Reviews

This is the dog's - no bull!!!!
Really hits the parts other gangster books don't reach. Another book by top gangster author Richards puts him firmly on the map to tell it as it is. You can be assured that what you read is the dog's, with no bull! This book delivers in true gangster style. This is a gutsy book with plenty of the red stuff to keep you enthralled.

Revs off the scale with shear, bloody-minded violence!
Regional colloquialisms (informal speech) are used in many books, this one is no different, and yet they are universally understood. Alfred Hitchcock once said, "If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on." The author, Stephen Richards, does infer some intelligence of the reader by not having to literally explain well known terms that are bandied about in newspapers, on TV and generally mimicked around the world. I mean, some people can't even spell the names of cities. Some will even spell Liverpool like so: Liverepool. Now what does that tell you of their intelligence?

That said, this is a story that will stand the test of time and can be understood worldwide for what happens to two people at odds with themselves, others and each other. Who wouldn't want to see two giant-sized men knock seven bells out of each other, and yet what we long for never happens. All sorts of violent interludes dispatch Viv Graham and Lee Duffy in different directions from each other, and yet they and their lives are intertwined like mature ivy is on a house end. I won't spoil it for you, as it is just warming up before it revs off the scale with shear, bloody-minded violence!

two of the hardest in the country
For anyone having read the book `Viv Graham and Lee Duffy's Parallel Lives', then you will know of how Lee Duffy seemed to reach out from the grave to those that mocked him. There is something uncanny about how so many people intertwined in Duffy's life met a sudden and violent end to their life. Even the woman of the man that killed Duffy hung herself!

The Parallel Lives book held nothing back, a great shame that it is no longer available. However, this book is just as good and covers two of the hardest men in the country, they may not have been the cleverest of men but they were as hard as rock.

Two protagonists and sworn enemies always just missing each other, always just within killing distance of each other but not quite aware of each other, how enthralling.