Crime Squad: Life and death on London's front line - Paperback

by Kris Hollington (Author), Mike Pannett (Author)

Fresh out of training school, Mike Pannett always knew policing the mean streets of London would be very different from the rural North Yorkshire villages where he had been trained.

But nothing had prepared him for how different.

Sent south of the river to Battersea, in the middle of a crime wave, he is thrown straight into a drugs raid - and finds himself staring straight into a double-barrelled shotgun.

London is in the middle of a drugs war, with the rise of crack cocaine, and the notorious Yardies are defending the trade with complete disregard for the law, or for human life. Rivals are eliminated without mercy, and whole districts fall under the control of the crime lords.

Mike and his colleagues fight back, and, with the support of local communities, start to bring law and order back to the streets.

But then PC Patrick Dunne, one of Mike's colleagues, is murdered. And Mike is drawn into the hunt for Gary Nelson, a man described by the press as 'the most dangerous man ever to walk the streets of Britain'. It is a search that will ultimately claim the life of another officer...and test the resolve and bravery of Mike and his colleagues to the limit.

Crime Squad is a terrifying exposé of police work in Britain's capital.

Praise for Crime Squad:
'A rollercoaster read of life on the front line' - Sir Hugh Orde, OBE QPM 'Gripping from first to last' - Andy Trotter, OBE QPM.

Mike Pannett was born in York and joined the Metropolitan Police in 1988. He became one of the youngest officers to be given his own patrol (in one of London's toughest estates) and went on to serve on the Divisional Crime Squad, Murder Squad and TSG (Riot Police). Following the UK riots in 2011 Mike became a key spokesman on current policing issues in the UK, giving extensive interviews on national UK radio and television. He lives with his wife Ann, who is still a serving police officer, and their three children in a small village in North Yorkshire.