Product Description

Cocaine is known by a myriad of different names, including Charlie, snow, toot and white. But in Glasgow in the early 1980s, they called it Happy Dust. At no-holds-barred parties of the glamorous and wealthy, cocaine fuelled the loss of inhibitions and the realisation of fantasies. It was the new aphrodisiac for which glamorous models would shed their clothes and ordinary housewives would forget their vows. A few lines of Charlie and a humdrum party could become an orgy. The trail led from the forests of Colombia to Glasgow streets where butchers and bakers, fruiterers and Ferrari drivers passed Charlie along the line to the cocktail set, yuppies desperate for kicks and thrills, young people in clubs and discotheques, and highly paid sports stars. Behind it all was a man they called the Parachutist. But all too soon, the party was over. People became too greedy and the Parachutist was double-crossed. Some of the gang did shady deals with detectives in hotel rooms; others flew to seek shelter in the sun, their reputations destroyed but not their fortunes. For the Happy Dust Gang the good times might have been over but their legacy lives on to this day.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #541113 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From the Publisher
The story behind the rise and fall of Scotland's first cocaine smugglers and the beginnings of a major crime syndicate

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. He is also the author of the bestselling Crimelord: The Licensee, about the elusive multimillionaire gangster Tam McGraw.

Customer Reviews

No joy in Happy Dust
The lurid stock photo on the cover of this book promises a wealth of crime, sex and scandal within. But buyer beware, the exploits of the happy dust gang as presented by author David Leslie fall far short of interesting and the biggest act of criminality is the lack of real insight and bungled prose contained within its pages.

As a former Glasgow resident, I admit to being seduced by the promise of an expose on the heady hotspots of the city in the early 80's. The names of the clubs were all too familiar; Charlie Parker's, Maestro's, The Cotton Club. But Mr Leslie, a former News of the World columnist, despite his prurience, fails to drag up a single incident that would be worthy of a story by his former employers. His constant references to the 'brassiere', either a lady's lack of, or the wearing on the head thereof, casts him as a salacious voyeur, out of time and step with his subjects. His moralistic payoffs and garbled drug facts reminded me of lines from "Reefer Madness", betraying the obvious conflict of his own fascination with the scene and his apparent obligation to sensationalise the facts for the reader.

The worst charge of all to lay at Mr Leslie's door would be that of padding the book when he clearly has no more to say. These segues, transparent at best, excruciating at worst, arrive from almost anywhere. If you use a piece of period detail such as 'Rod Stewart was singing "Do you think I'm sexy?" on the Hi-Fi', it is not appropriate to then fill the next three pages telling us what Rod had been up to recently and no David, the Chicago mafia were probably not thinking about the Glasgow Happy Dust Gang and how similar their circumstances were. I appreciate you have access to the newspaper story archive and some research of the period is a good idea when writing a book, but this is a clumsy and lazy approach that annoys the reader and is worthy of derision.

All said, if I was Brian Doran, I'd be angry that my drug-fuelled, high-roller, life of crime had been portrayed in such a pedestrian way. Really, what's the point of risking it all for a life of hedonism and riches only to be undermined by a mid-level hack trawling through a box of dusty microfiches. I suggest that Mr. Leslie stop grubbing about in the lives of others, put a brassiere on his head and get out there and enjoy it for himself!

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