Young Guns [Paperback]

This is a very poor book which is badly written. It seems that the author has raided the local media and pieced together stories from different area's to make a book. The chapter on the City I live in is very scant with detail and misses out a lot of what has actually occurred in this area. Don't buy this book it's rubbish. Save yourself some money for something that's worth reading.

The vast majority of information in this book can be retrieved using the Google search tool, just type gangs and your local town or city and it's likely to churn out at least one chapter of this book for you.

Some of portrayals seem very exaggerated and over sensationalised, particularly for places like Halifax and Lancaster where what seem to be groups of Chav's are suddenly hardened gangsters. I can only comment on my own city however, London. It starts with south London and a quote from a website on the number of gangs and gang members, neither figure is certified. It then makes a stupid remark that most gun crime takes place in London, not surprising when nearly 1 in 5 English resident lives in London.

It then goes on to take more information from another website about the North Peckham estate before blaming the YPB for the murder of Damilola Taylor. Then it goes onto the Ghetto Boys who apparently rose to fame in 2004, which of course any resident in south-east London and Lewisham could chart a history back to at least the early 1990's. Then you have the portrayal of Peckham Boys and Ghetto Boys being like Bloods and Crips, which is rubbish, the two areas aren't even rivals any more. Then comes just more and more information taken from the internet on south London gangs.

The author then becomes fascinated with talking about London's Latin gangs, drawing imagined parallels with the USA, and a funny remark that Deptford is like Compton - obviously the author has not been to Compton.

He then moves to West London, which is even more ludicrous than the garbage in the South London section. Straight away he gets muddled up with the gang names in W9/NW6, gets the names wrong and makes a false statement about how the Mozart Bloods and South Kilburn gangs came to be in conflict. He then bigs up a youth gang which no longer exists in the Harrow Road area. Then he goes on to talk about a Polish gang in Hounslow called Polish Unit - can someone clarify that there is such a gang in Hounslow? More newspaper articles populate a few pages dedicated to the Murder Dem Pussies gang from West London, including the tragic killing of Kodjo Yenga. He then attributes the killing of Yasin Abdirahman to MDP, when most of those convicted were part of their younger generation known as FDA. Then he talks about crimes which are linked to South Acton as if they were committed by MDP.

Next North London, which for some reason seems to consist in the authors mind as Brent, Haringey, Enfield and Islington. The first couple of pages are basically descriptions of a documentary series called Murder Blues which chronicles the work of Operation Trident. You can watch these documentaries on YouTube if you don't feel like reading a description of them in the book. He then has the cheek to say an innocent teenager killed at a dance in Hackney was caught up in a gang feud that had yet to even begin. More information comes pieced together from newspaper articles and websites. He then attributes another young death to a rivalry which doesn't exist. Cleary has no understanding of the street dynamics in North London. A few articles then populate the next few pages, taken almost word for word by articles written by journalist Elizabeth Pears. He then copies another article which says 'former gang member Ken Hinds stepped in to try and broker a truce between Edmonton gangs', which is untrue.

Finally, East London. Lots of errors and inaccuracies, largely owing to the fact this chapter concentrates on Waltham Forest and borrows heavily from the Reluctant Gangsters study done there by Professor John Pitts. He refers to the callous killing of a teenage boy as a 'petty squabble'. The whole chapter is complete utter garbage. The author has probably never even been to London, certainly not to any of the areas spoken about. This was an utter waste of £7.99, a new low for Milo Books.

This book was a complete waste of money. It's full of information that i could have easily found by using Google and reading a few newspaper articles.

On top of that, there is loads of incorrect information.

As mentioned in other reviews, it is basically just a few little stories and articles put together to create a book, very disappointing.