Big Shots by Adam Shand(link is external) - tags: True Crime [Our New Books - LibraryThing(link is external)]
For a really different take on the Melbourne Underworld ructions in recent years, Big Shots provides an interesting insight into the minds of many of the players, and the affects that proximity to them can have on somebody from the outside. My review just published at: http://www.austcrimefiction.org/node/3570
In 2003 Adam Shand, until then a finance journalist, naively set out to unravel Melbourne's bloody gangland wars. A few months' research, a guaranteed cover story. But his foray into the underworld took him deeper than that. He became embroiled in a complex world where feuds raged between rival families, and where a new generation was clashing with the criminal Establishment. Before long, he found himself counted as a friend by those who sometimes ended friendships with a hail of bullets.
Big Shots takes the reader into the heart of the city's multi-billion dollar 'disorganised crime' scene, as Shand meets the key figures and suspects, including Carl and Roberta Williams, Mick Gatto, and many others. He discovers the human drama behind the brutal slayings that were splashed across the front pages, and in the process comes to question his objectivity. And even whether he is being used to further the players' murderous ends.