Sorted on book title (not in series order)
Story of Raymond Edmunds, a convicted rapist and double murderer who was active in Victoria, Australia from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. Edmunds was dubbed "Mr Stinky" by a newspaper editor due to his offensive body odour which was believed to have been caused by a mixture of milk, manure...Read more
Another day, another underworld funeral. In Melbourne, generations of gangsters have lived and died by the creed "We catch and kill our own". But now the violence bubbling under the surface has spilled into open war on the streets.
This is the story of the gangsters, the hitmen...Read more
Journalist and podcaster Andrew Rule brings us eighteen Australian crime stories that have fuelled fears, fired outrage and broken hearts and dreams. Among them are events so infamous that a word or phrase propels us back to a time and place. The disappearance of the Beaumont children from...Read more
Catching up with true crime reading meant I also had to pick up LIFE & CRIMES by Andrew Rule. A different tone from his sometime writing partner, John Silvester, Rule's style is more, I don't know, measured. Certainly he's less inclined towards calling a spade a bloody shovel, but...Read more
In Outside the Law some of our best crime writers take you on a trip into the shadows of Australian society. You'll meet crooks who just can't help themselves; killers with twisted logic or hearts of darkness; and cops who daily walk the thinnest of lines to keep them at bay, and away from...Read more
As the world goes about its daily business, criminals and cops engage in a deadly battle of wits. This book delves into the crimes that police have to deal with day after day. Murderers, hitmen, kidnappers, and drug dealers all feature in this collection of true crime stories. Take the drug...Read more
He got the job. Then he got the bullet.
You've seen the television series and read the stories in the papers. Now return to the books that started documenting Australia's underbelly. With their trademark forensic skills, respected journalists John Silvester and Andrew Rule bring...Read more
They couldn't shoot holes in Fred's story.
So they shot holes in Fred instead.
John Desmond "Fred" Gordon was the star prosecution witness in Operation T-Bone. He rejected police pleas to go into witness protection, punting that he could live longer on the street...Read more
An international executioner flew from California to Melbourne to kill a man he'd never met. Police have the evidence, but he will never return to Australia to stand trial. Now he sits in a cell in Vietnam facing his own execution. He could save his life if he gave evidence against the men...Read more
She had the will...he had the way.
The old lady just wanted to enjoy her last few years. The adopted son wanted to inherit her savings. He persuaded his own son to bash her to death. He got the lot and bought a yacht to sail the Pacific. His son got fifteen years.
...Read more
Lorraine Moss loved to cook... ...
her meatloaf was to die for.
No one knew what made Johnny Moss sick. The robust slaughterman was reduced to life in a wheelchair as his health failed by degrees. Friends marvelled at the way his wife stuck by her man as he faded...Read more
I'm overdosing on the Underbelly series a bit at the moment, using them as fillers between some hefty Crime Fiction tomes, and why not. In Underbelly 6 the authors take you thought the disappearance of a wife, mother and ex-TV game show model, a bit about the stitch up of the Mickelberg...Read more
Reptiles killed Aubrey Broughill...but which ones?
It takes balls to become Australia's oldest stick-up man. In a 60-year criminal career Aubrey 'Grandpa Harry' Broughill had what it took, right to the end. But when his bloated body was found in a flooded quarry, his testicles...Read more
Gangsters use guns to climb out of the gutter, but often find themselves back in it, handcuffed or even dead. This is Australia's underbelly.Read more
Andrew Veniamin was a short man with a short fuse. A gunman with four scalps, he dropped in for a late lunch with his one-time idol, former heavyweight Mick Gatto, and bit off more than he could chew. The pair went into a corridor at the back of the restaurant but only Gatto walked out....Read more
The UNDERBELLY series is a set of shortish books written by journalists Silvester and Rule covering various events in the criminal underworld of Victoria in particular.
Underbelly 9 covers the shooting of Andrew Veniamin by Mick Gatto, and Gatto's subsequent trial and acquittal...Read more
Mario turned up on time. So did the hitman.
Sometimes, playing by the rules can get you killed. When lawyer-turned-gangster Mario Condello accepted a curfew in order to get bail, he knew he had to be home every night at 10 o'clock. But so did a man with a gun....Read more
With their trademark forensic skills, respected journalists John Silvester and Andrew Rule bring to life stories of gang wars and crooked cops, of crimes in high places and suffering in low, of murder, courtroom drama and political machinations, of drug lords and hitmen in crash-through-or-...Read more
Slayed in Sydney. Chris 'Rentakill' Flannery was a Melbourne gunman who sold his services to Sin City's highest bidder. He went on the missing list because he didn't realise the future belonged to those who controlled pills and powders, not pistols. A world of corrupt cops, bent politicians...Read more
'Pino' Acquaro got his big Italian funeral, but the mobsters didn't get the memo. The church was packed but nearly every gangster he knew stayed away. The handsome mafia lawyer had bungled burning down his Brunswick bar for the insurance but he had burned his bridges beyond repair. A couple...Read more
First he got lucky.
Then he got life.
They called Carl Williams 'The Truth' but the truth was he was just a fat kid with a pill press and a taste for fast food, fast women and fast bucks. He got lucky the day Jason Moran shot him in the belly instead of in the...Read more
UNDERBELLY - THE GANGLAND WAR is probably a compilation book of a lot of the sections previously covered in the earlier Underbelly books by journalists Silvester and Rule. The book, interestingly, is freely available and openly publicised in Victoria - the state where the TV show...Read more
Nearly everyone has heard of the Underbelly tv series. You've either watched it, or can't wait to see what the fuss was about if you live in Victoria.
Not everyone knows that the Underbelly tv series is based on the John Silvester and Andrew Rule book, Leadbelly. (A...Read more
Carl Williams once liked to brag he won Australia's bloodiest underworld war because he survived when most of his rivals couldn't. Even while inside Victoria's maximum-security prison he saw the last man standing from the Moran clan gunned down outside a coffee shop in a middle class suburb...Read more
It's 1989 and the cops are on the take and the crims are on the make. They are kings of the Cross. They run the street that put the sin in Sin City. The Golden Mile. Kim Hollingsworth is a policeman's daughter who wants to follow daddy's footsteps. She's a stripper and a hooker but that's...Read more
Mokbelly: The Final Chapter of the Underbelly War or how Carl, Tony and Judy met their match.Read more
It's the story linking unsolved crimes that have taunted and haunted police and victims' families for years - four murders as dark and daring as any in Australian organised crime and a string of million-dollar heists.Read more