Killing Charlie - Wensley Clarkson

Killing Charlie charts the extraordinary rise and spectacular fall of Charlie Wilson, the most powerful villain to emerge from the ultimate British crime of the twentieth century: the Great Train Robbery.

Wilson moved on from armed robbery to become an all-powerful figure in the drug underworld. But his life of greed and corruption would eventually end when his rivals decided to wipe him off the face of the earth - with the tacit approval of Spanish, British and US drug enforcement agencies.

Killing Charlie is a roller-coaster ride through five decades of London's gangland, including a long spell on the Costa del Crime and forays into the deadliest killing fields of all: South America. Meticulously researched, it pulls the reader into Wilson's bizarre, sordid, crime-filled world - one that took him from the mean streets of south London to even harsher prison corridors, and from a quiet life in small-town Canada to the heated, manic, cocaine-fuelled Costa del Sol. Containing interviews with many of Charlie Wilson's former associates, Killing Charlie also reveals how Wilson was feared by many other criminals; how his love of pretty women almost cost him his life; and how he desperately tried to 'retire', only to discover the inevitable - that gangsters never rest in peace.