Crime Squad: Life and Death on London’s Front Line

“A rollercoaster read of life on the front line.”
Sir Hugh Orde OBE QPM

“An accurate and fascinating picture of police work at the sharp end.”
Detective Superintendent John Jones (rtd)

“Gripping from first to last.”
Andy Trotter OBE QPM

London 1988: PC Mike Pannett, fresh out of training school, had suspected life in the Metropolitan Police was going to be a bit different from rural North Yorkshire, but the 23-year-old had no idea by just how much. Sent south of the river to Battersea, then top of London’s crime league tables, Mike was thrown straight into the deep end – during his first drugs raid he ended up staring down the wrong end of a double-barrelled shotgun.

Mike’s arrival in London coincided with the explosion in crack cocaine use. In the early 1990s, Yardies – criminal gangs from Jamaica and the USA - flooded into the capital, starting in Battersea, where they brought all manner of guns with them, along with a live-fast die-young attitude. Rivals were ruthlessly eliminated and whole neighbourhoods fell under the control of drug gangs. Mike and his police colleagues fought back with extraordinary valour and inventiveness and with the support of the local community they started to turn the tide – but then came the unthinkable crime: the murder in 1993 of PC Patrick Dunne, one of Mike’s colleagues, by Gary Nelson, aka ‘Tyson’, a criminal the national press described as ‘the most dangerous man ever to walk to the streets of Britain.’ Mike was drawn into the long and exceptionally dangerous hunt for Nelson that would go on to cost the life of another police officer.

Crime Squad takes readers on an unforgettable ride as Mike, an innocent lad from the Yorkshire Dales, learns to grow up fast and stay alive on the mean streets of London.

A portion of the proceeds from every book sold will go to Care of Police Survivors (COPS), a UK registered charity dedicated to helping the families of police officers who have lost their lives whilst on duty. ukcops.org