The Westies: Inside New York's Irish Mob

Even among the Mob, the Westies were feared.

Growing out of a partnership between two sadistic thugs - James Coonan and Mickey Featherstone - the Irish-American gang dominated the decaying slice of New York City's West Side known as Hell's Kitchen in the 1970s and '80s.

They excelled in extortion, numbers running, loansharking and drug-peddling, and they became the most notorious gang in the history of organized crime - then prosecutor Rudolf Giuliani calling them 'the most savage organisation in the long history of New York street gangs'. Upping the ante on brutality and depravity, their speciality when it came to punishment and killings was dismemberment.

Theirs was a reign that would last almost twenty years. And their end would come as their own violent natures got the better of them and precipitated a downfall as infamous and brutal as their rise.

This revised and updated edition of T J English's debut brings the near-unbelievable story of the Westies to shocking yet compelling life. The Westies is recognised as a true crime classic.