Shooters

THE LAST DAYS of the 20th Century saw a crackdown on Manchester’s warring gangs. Many prominent underworld heads were jailed and the authorities launched a major assault on gang crime to rid the city of its ‘Gunchester’ reputation. The results, however, have been mixed.

Shooters tells the story of the new gangbangers who emerged in the new century, with names like the Moss Side Bloodz, the Fallowfield Mad Dogs and the Old Trafford Cripz. It gives a unique inside account of the war between the Pitt Bull Crew and the Longsight Crew; tells how two underworld armourers dubbed the Merchant of Death and Bobby the Gun supplied the gangs with reactivated weapons; recounts the sordid end of Dessie Noonan, one of the city’s most notorious enforcers; and chronicles the infamous bloodbath at the Brass Handles pub in Salford, when two would-be assassins were themselves executed.

It also describes the rise of violent Asian gangs, the ingenious methods of international smugglers in supplying the city’s large drugs market, the wealth and audacity of the armed robbers of Salford, and how the killing spread to the neighbouring towns of Bolton and Oldham drug dealers. Shooters is a powerful account of one city’s ongoing struggle with the law of the gun.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BEN BLACK is a newspaper journalist specialising in crime. He has written extensively on some of the North West’s most notorious gang cases in recent years. This is his first book.