crime
Call the Police – There’s a Comedian Around
A Funny – and Tragic – Memoir of Life in the Met
by Paul Byrne
Paul Byrne joined London’s Metropolitan Police by mistake. By day a Detective Inspector, by night a stand-up comedian, this is a memoir of law enforcement not exactly going to plan. DI Byrne walked a tightrope of death, destruction and disaster, much of it caused by himself. From a near-death experience at the hands of the Australian SAS to causing a diplomatic incident with North Korea, it was a hell of a ride. Yet sucked into a dark and troubling whirlpool of police corruption, eventually he would be forced out of the service a broken man. Paul remains the only serving police officer to be mugged on duty – and the only one to be sacked for writing satire. His story shines an amusing, and at times horrifying, light into the darkest corners of Britain’s largest police force.
“A fascinating account – full of tragic and hilarious stories shot through with Byrne’s wonderful appreciation of the absurdity of life…” – ARTHUR SMITH
Murder in Mind
Investigations from a Yorkshire Crime Writer’s Casebook
By Stephen Wade
There has always been a fascination with crime and punishment; from highwaymen to the foul deeds of Bradford lorry driver Peter Sutcliffe. The allure of the unsolved case has long provided material for true crime and fiction writers.
In Stephen Wade’s personal casebook, Murder in Mind, he gazes back over favourite investigations in his home county Yorkshire – rich with villainous acts, painstaking detective work and injustice.
Read about Leeds’s most notorious female killer Louie Calvert and why Wade believes her conviction and hanging a travesty. Learn of famous hangmen, Chartist rebels and cases open to fresh investigation, such as those of Bill o’ Jacks, Mr Blum and Emily Pye.
Murder in Mind brings together Stephen’s journeys into the criminal underworld, including his work as a writer in prisons and his research in the murder archives.
The basis for this book was created in the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ years, when the impact of that series of murders sparked the crime writer in him. His tutor, Stanley Ellis, worked on the notoriously misleading ‘Ripper Tapes.’
Since then, Stephen has written over 70 non-fiction titles – many of them on the history of crime and the law – but this is something different. It is a mixture of memoir, reflection and the realisation that murder often happens down the street.
