Mayhem! : The Life of Britain's Most Dangerous Man

Notorious as Britain's most controversial gangland icon, Conroy has fought and shouted down his critics for decades.

He's faced off with his rivals and the law, and served long terms in jail as a Category AA prisoner, branding him a serious threat to society. Yet, despite inducements, he has never told the inside - and primary - story of the murders, the tortures, the terrors, the corruption and the gun law that controlled and still rules the north-east of England. Or the terrifying details of the armed robberies and the street shootouts. Or the multi-million-pound drug business that infected Tyneside, provoking fatal rivalry between the families feuding to be kings of the underworld.

He's a hard man, a street fighter, but he says that a decade of unwarranted police harassment has brought chaos to his family. To the amazement of all, rivals and friends, Paddy Conroy has survived every bare-knuckle scramble, street shoot-out, and his brutal underworld heritage from his career-criminal father Leonard, a fierce villain of the Get Carter era. Now, in the gangland book of the year, Conroy reveals the story of his jailbreak and life on the run; the secret meetings with gangland figures from the UK - and the truth about that infamous torture-kidnap for which he served eleven years in jail, as well as the bitter and savage ongoing feud between the Conroy and Sayers families of Newcastle.