The Glasgow Chronicles by Ian Todd (Books #1-7)
Requirements: ePUB, AZW3 reader, 5.5 MB, 2.3 MB
Overview: Glasgow in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Ian Todd portraits the hard streetlife of young and teenaged boys who are confronted with violence, dysfunctional families, a corrupt police and abusive authorities. They are criminals but life doesn’t leave much choice in the matter. Nor much choice about their future. Not only uses Todd the Glasgow working-class dialect of the time but also other authentic, regional dialects. An appealing detail deepening the feel and atmosphere of Glasgow at the time.
Genre: Fiction > Crime | Scottish Historical
Parly Road (#1) It is the summer of 1965 and things are looking up for ten-year-old Johnboy Taylor in the Townhead district of Glasgow. Not only has he made two new pals, who have recently come to his school after being expelled from one of the local Catholic schools, but their dream of owning their own pigeon loft or ‘dookit’ and competing with the city’s grown-up ‘doo-men’ in the sport they love, could soon become a reality. The only problem is that The Mankys don’t have the dosh to pay for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Lady Luck begins to shine down on them when Pat Molloy, aka The Big Man, one of Glasgow’s top heavies asks them to do him a wee favour. The Mankys are soon embroiled in an adult world of gangsters, police corruption, violence and crime.
Run Johnboy Run (#2) It is 1968 and The Mankys are back with a vengeance after thirteen-year-old Johnboy Taylor is confronted by a ghost from his past. The only problem is, he’s just been sentenced to 3 years at Thistle Park Approved School, which houses Scotland’s wildest teen tearaways. Without his liberty, Johnboy is in no position to determine whether the devastating revelation is a figment of his vivid imagination or whether dark forces are conspiring against him.
Elsewhere in the city, Glasgow crime lord, Pat Molloy, aka The Big Man, is plotting to topple those who he believes were responsible for putting him out of the city’s thriving ‘Doo’ business three years earlier.
The Lost Boy and the Gardener’s Daughter (#3) It is 1969 and 14-year-old Paul McBride is discharged from Lennox Castle Psychiatric Hospital after suffering a nervous breakdown whilst serving a 3-year sentence in St Ninian’s Approved School in Stirling. St Ninians has refused to take Paul back because of his disruptive behaviour. As a last resort, the authorities agree for Paul to recuperate in the foster care of an elderly couple, Innes and Whitey McKay, on a remote croft in the Kyle of Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands.
Unbeknown to the authorities, Innes McKay is one of the most notorious poachers in the Kyle.
Innes is soon teaching his young charge the age-old skills of the Highland poacher. Inevitably, this leads to conflict between the street-wise youth from the tenements in Glasgow and the Duke’s estate keepers.
The Mattress (#4) Dark clouds are gathering over Springburn’s tenements, in the lead up to the Christmas holiday period of 1971. The Mankys, now one of Glasgow’s foremost up and coming young criminal gangs, are in trouble…big trouble…and there doesn’t seem to be anything that their charismatic leader, Tony Gucci, can do about it.
To make matters worse, Tony’s mentor, Pat Molloy, aka The Big Man and his chief lieutenant, Wan-bob Brown, have disappeared from the Glasgow underworld scene, resulting in Tony having to deal with Shaun Murphy, who has taken charge of The Big Man’s criminal empire in The Big Man’s absence.
As if this isn’t bad enough, Johnboy Taylor and Silent Smith, two of the key Manky players, are currently languishing in solitary confinement in Polmont Borstal.
Tony and The Mankys have to come up with a plan that will bring all the key players into the ring, whilst at the same time, allow The Mankys to avenge the murder of a friend.
The Wummin (#5) It is 1971 in Glasgow’s Springburn. On the 17th December, Issie McManus’s only son, Joe, is stabbed to death on the steps of The Princes Bingo Hall, on the same evening that her man, Tam, gets lifted by the police and shipped up to Barlinnie for an unpaid fine. As her life crumbles round about her, Issie turns to her neighbour and friend, Helen Taylor, who gathers together a group of local women, who are the scourge of The Corporation’s Sheriff Officers Warrant Sales squad, to take command of the situation.
As the demonstrations against warrant sales in the area continue over Christmas, bringing Helen Taylor’s gang of motley women back on to the streets, The Reverend Flaw and his wife, Susan, believe they have found the ideal candidate to prevent JP Donnelly’s resurrected political ambitions from bearing fruit.
An unholy alliance is formed that will go to any lengths to stop the opposition candidate from upsetting their political masters in George Square.
Dumfries (#6) With Tony, Johnboy, Silent, Snappy and Pat all doing time, the remnants of what was once a thriving money-making outfit, is being managed by Simon Epstein, owner of Carpet Capers Warehouse. When Simon is not plotting the downfall of the legendary Honest John McCaffrey, ‘The Housewife’s Choice,’ and owner of Honest John’s Kitchen Essentials shop by day, but one of the city’s top moneylenders and gangsters by night, Simon is ruthlessly ensuring that The Mankys’ wheel-of-fortune stays firmly on track.
When everything seems to be on a downwards spiral and with no reprieve in sight for those languishing in jail, hope appears on the horizon through the smoke of screeching tyres from a speeding car in Colston, as it ejects the half-dead body of Haufwit Murray, sometime police informer and one of the city’s transient gangland hanger-ons. As he lies close to death in the Intensive Care Unit of Stobhill General Hospital, with little hope of recovery, Haufwit’s dying confession to Inspector Paddy ‘The Stalker’ McPhee triggers a chain reaction that forces Wan-bob Broon, the city’s Mr Big, out into the open, bringing deadly consequences for some and celebration and hope for others.
Silver Arrow (#7) After visiting Johnboy Taylor, Scotland’s longest-serving young offender, in Dumfries Young Offenders Institution, Nurse Senga Jackson heads back to Glasgow, unaware of the mortal danger that she and her flatmate, Lizzie Mathieson are in after Lizzie unwittingly overhears the deathbed confession of a dying gangster to Inspector Paddy ‘The Stalker’ McPhee, who has threatened to expose the sordid sex-life of the doctor on duty, in order to access the intensive care unit of Stobhill General Hospital in the middle of the night.
With half of The Mankys, Glasgow’s most up and coming young criminal gang, serving time in Dumfries, including their charismatic leader, Tony Gucci, responsibility for the safety of Senga Jackson and her flatmate is placed in the hands of nineteen-year-old Simon Epstein, a young entrepreneur in the Cowcaddens district of the city.
Despite the odds being stacked against The Mankys and the two young nurses, Simon joins up with one of Glasgow’s top criminal legal teams in the battle to secure the evidence that could prove that Johnboy Taylor is innocent of shooting two police officers in a bank robbery in Maryhill.
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1-5: http://ceesty.com/wLR8du
6-7: http://ceesty.com/wLR8dd
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