Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #111557 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Synopsis
The Krays - Unfinished Business is a fascinating and revealing insight into the workings of the Krays and the criminal underworld of the 1960s. More explosive than any other book published before, the book uses previously unseen material and eyewitness accounts that expose the true nature of the Krays and their cohorts and will lay bare the facts behind some of the twentieth century's most notorious crimes. Central to the story are new insights into the murders they committed - and one they got away with - were not revealed to the public until January 2000 (and were first published in this book).

Customer Reviews

I had the misfortune to purchase this book
... I have read many true crime books and this has to be the worst. The authour never draws you in to the book and you don't ever feel like wanting to read on. If you do have the misfortune to buy this book skip the first 100 pages or so because they are totally irrevelant to the rest of the book.

The best book on the Krays for the intelligent reader ever written!
Fido begins with a potted history of London's organised criminal gangs and families, placing the Krays in their historical context. He avoids the crass romanticising of these men's lives that the hack writers of best-selling Kray "biographies" indulge in. Fido identifies the reality behind their activities - Evil.

The truth finally told about the Krays
I have read a number of books (although not all) about the Kray brothers and this has to be one of the very best. I thought that John Pearson's book, `The Profession of Violence' was very well written but badly flawed when it came to accuracy and `Nipper' Read's book was also very well written, although the Krays were, of course, part of Read's own autobiography. The books by the Kray brothers themselves may have had the assistance of a ghost writer, although I doubt it; their books are triumphs of illiterate self-justification, some of them so unintentionally funny that they might have achieved some measure of success as works of comedy.

Martin Fido's book, on the other hand has been scrupulously researched and he has very cleverly built up the picture of crime in London, prior to the emergence of the Krays and then having introduced them to the reader, expertly sets out their vast criminal empire and describes many of the deeply unpleasant characters who inhabited it. Fido has no truck with those who seek to portray the Krays as `the salt of the earth' or `diamond geezers' - he describes them as they really were: bullying, out-of-control gangsters, one psychotic, the other borderline, who were permitted, due to their victims' fear, to behave precisely how they pleased. Even after their arrest, their arrogance on remand was phenomenal, casually telling members of their gang who would accept the blame for crimes which they themselves had committed. And once they were convicted and sentenced, the brothers who had denied any participation during their trials in respect of the murders for which they were found guilty, now boasted of their involvement, glorying in the violence and seeking justification for their acts.

Mr. Fido is to be congratulated for producing such a well-written, brave book; anybody wanting to know what the Krays were really like, should look no further than this book.