Book description
John Pearson's
The Profession of Violence
created the myth of the Kray twins, and remains a classic of True
Crime, the best book ever written on East London criminals and a book
that started a mini publishing industry. Pearson is an authority on the
London crime scene, which is why he was surprised while attending Ronnie
Kray's funeral to see a man to whom all the other villains deferred, but
who he didn't recognise. Investigation revealed that this man, "the
Englishman", never mentioned in any of the previous books on
organised crime because everyone was too scared to speak his name, was
as legendary a figure on the streets of New York as on the streets of
London. Pearson persuaded the mysterious criminal leader to talk to him
- and the result was a story even more extraordinary than that of the
Kray twins. Here Pearson reveals the true story of the Englishman who
became the adopted son of Joey Pagano, the head of one of the major New
York crime families. Here the Englishman tells the story that no-one
else dared to tell. John Pearson worked for The Economist
, the BBC and The Sunday Times
before becoming Ian Fleming's assistant. An author who specialises in
true crime and biographies, he has written the only authorised biography
of Ian Fleming, a fictional biography of James Bond and The
Profession of Violence,
a crime biography of legendary East End gangsters, the Kray twins.
