Cocky

By: Tony Barnes, Richard Elias, Peter Walsh

Narrated by: Graham Mack

Curtis Warren is an underworld legend, the Liverpool scally who took the methods of the street corner drug dealer and elevated them to an art form. He forged direct links with the cocaine cartels of Colombia, the heroin godfathers of Turkey, the cannabis growers of Morocco, and the ecstasy labs of Holland and Eastern Europe to source his supply as cheaply as possible and so maximize his profits. He then sold his narcotics around the world, from the clubs of London, Manchester, and Glasgow to the beaches of Sydney, Australia.

His underlings called him the "Cocky Watchman" for his eternal vigilance and his "sixth sense". His pursuers called him "Target One". This best-selling biography, shortlisted for the Gold Dagger for crime nonfiction, uncovers his meteoric rise to become "the richest and most successful British criminal who has ever been caught". Warren was pursued by the elite of British law enforcement but repeatedly evaded their clutches, even walking free from the country's biggest-ever drugs trial.

By the time he had risen to become the biggest trafficker in the country, navigating through gang warfare in Liverpool and a number of hefty seizures, both the police and HM Custom were desperate to bring him down. How they finally did so, after managing to tap his phones and listen to his most intimate conversations, is described in pulsating detail. It also reveals for the first time the preeminent role of Merseyside gangs in the UK's drug scene, and how they rose to such dizzy, dubious heights.

Cocky is a shocking insight into modern organized crime and a vivid account of the workings of the international underworld.

©2011 Peter Walsh (P)2022 Peter Walsh

Critic reviews

"Compelling." (The Observer)