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Before the East End of London was cleaned up and gentrified, it was a very different place. That’s where my story begins.
In this short video, I introduce From Scotland Yard to Author, a series where I share some of the experiences I had as a police officer—and later a detective—working in London during the 1960s and 1970s. This was a time of organized crime, armed robberies, and hard lessons learned on cobbled streets that hadn’t changed much since the days of Jack the Ripper.
I’ll be talking about real cases, real people, and real moments—some serious, some embarrassing, and some unexpectedly funny. These experiences are what eventually led me to write Hustling the Mob, a novel based on true episodes from my life, and they continue to shape the stories I tell today.
This video sets the scene for what’s coming next: stories from my time in uniform, my move into detective work, and how I made the transition from policing to writing.
If you’re interested in true stories from a very different era of policing—and how those experiences became fiction—I invite you to watch the introduction below. In the next episode, I explain how I became a detective… after crashing three police cars.