This is the remarkable, true story of one of the world's most notorious criminals... Brenden James Abbott was the most wanted man in Australia. He became as famous for his ability to elude the authorities as he did for the daring bank raids he carried out; he escaped from custody three times and was on the run for a total of almost seven years. In this astounding and gripping book, he reveals how he pulled off two daring escapes from maximum security prisons and executed some of Australia's most profitable and complex bank robberies. He also reveals how his skills with disguises and fake identification allowed him to repeatedly slip through the fingers of oblivious police. Today, Abbott remains in solitary confinement and under constant camera surveillance, serving what he says is effectively a life sentence - he believes he is a political prisoner, and that the authorities are determined to make him pay for exposing their failings. Author Derek Pedley is the first journalist to speak to Abbott, Australia's most closely guarded criminal. Here, for the first time, Abbott himself, his family, the women who loved him, the bank staff he terrorised, the detectives who pursued him and the men who tried to emulate him, all reveal how the man who became as The Postcard Bandit put his stamp on the nation - and paid the price...
Derek Pedley was born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1972. He
is Night News Editor at The Advertiser newspaper in Adelaide, South
Australia. He was a script consultant on Postcard Bandit, a Nine Films
telemovie adaptation of No Fixed Address - The Hunt For Brenden James
Abbott (published in April, 1999, reprinted four times). It premiered on
Australia's Nine Network on June 1, 2003 and attracted 1.6 million TV
viewers. It was also released on DVD and video on March 23, 2005 and the
rights were subsequently sold to TV channels in more than 15 countries.
Pedley's authorised biography of Abbott, Australian Outlaw - The True Story
of Postcard Bandit Brenden Abbott, was published by Sly Ink on August 1,
2006. It will be published worldwide as The Outlaw's Story by John Blake
Publishing in July 2007.
Viv Graham
and Lee Duffy - Too Hard to Live, Too Young to
Die.
Viv Graham and Lee Duffy led parallel lives as pub and club enforcers, raging their gangland turf wars with a fierce frenzy of brutality and unremitting cruelty. This frank and astonishing book by underworld authority Stephen Richards is a riveting double portrait of two of the North East's most feared men whose bloody rivalry was cut short when they each met horrifically violent ends. With a frightening capacity for extreme violence, Tyneside protection hardman Viv struck fear into the hearts of his enemies, yet his benevolence to local charities and schemes to keep kids away from drugs and crime was well known - any patch that Viv protected was guaranteed free of both. He was the ultimate maverick trouble-shooter. Teeside drugs enforcer Lee Duffy had half his foot shot off in an assassination attempt and his skull beaten with a crowbar, but his streetwise instinct was unmatched. With unprecedented access to friends, family and associates, Stephen Richards dispels many of the myths surrounding these legendary figures.
Berry-Dee C & Odell R
Prime Suspect
Tammy Cohen