NIPPER READ: THE MAN WHO NICKED THE KRAYS by Leonard Read and James Morton
Just after 7pm on the evening of Tuesday 4 March 1969, at the Old Bailey, the jurors filed back into Court 1 to give their verdict on Ronald Kray. The word ‘guilty’ brought to a triumphant conclusion the months of painstaking work put in by Read and his team in their efforts to bring the infamous Kray brothers to justice.
Leonard Read tells his own story, that of the small Nottingham lad, nicknamed Nipper, who went to join the Metropolitan Police because of their less stringent height requirements – and who rose through the ranks to become part of the team solving the Great Train Robbery.
In 1964 Read was invited to put together a team to ‘have a go’ at the Kray gang – the seemingly untouchable East End criminals whose reign of terror involved blackmail, protection rackets and finally murder. In an enthralling recreation of the operation, Read and Morton cover the case from the first time Nipper saw Ronald Kray in a pub in the Whitechapel Road – where he turned up flanked by minders – to the brothers’ eventual arrest in May 1968 and the nailbiting suspense of their sensational trial.
‘A tasty dish… a tribute to the author’s frankness and his co-author’s skill’ ~ Independent
‘Vividly described’ ~ Daily Telegraph
James Morton is the author of the hugely successful Gangland series. He has long experience as a solicitor specialising in criminal work and was editor-in-chief of NEW LAW JOURNAL for many years.
