A chilling insight into the world of organised crime from a former member of Curtis Warren's cartel

Drug dealers beware. The Devil is coming to get you. Gangster Stephen French invented the perfect crime: robbing drug barons of their huge fortunes. In SAS-style swoops, French raided their fortified mansions and tortured them with horrifying violence until they paid up. Through 'taxing' the richest and most powerful crimelords in the UK, he netted over 20 million. French was no ordinary criminal. He was a world-champion fighter, he studied psychology at university to master mind-control techniques, and he used the teachings of Machiavelli and samurai warriors to outwit his enemies. "The Devil" also reveals French's complex relationship with Curtis Warren, the wealthiest criminal in British history. The two were childhood pals, then partners and finally bitter enemies. Now a legitimate businessman, French built up a multimillion-pound empire. Having eventually turned his back on his former life, he is now seeking to set the record straight.

Drug dealers beware. The Devil is coming to get you. Gangster Stephen French invented the perfect crime: robbing drug barons of their huge fortunes. In SAS-style swoops, French raided their fortified mansions and tortured them with horrifying violence until they paid up. Through 'taxing' the richest and most powerful crimelords in the UK, he netted over 20 million. French was no ordinary criminal. He was a world-champion fighter, he studied psychology at university to master mind-control techniques, and he used the teachings of Machiavelli and samurai warriors to outwit his enemies. "The Devil" also reveals French's complex relationship with Curtis Warren, the wealthiest criminal in British history. The two were childhood pals, then partners and finally bitter enemies. Now a legitimate businessman, French built up a multimillion-pound empire. Having eventually turned his back on his former life, he is now seeking to set the record straight.

Graham Johnson is the author of the bestselling Powder Wars, Football and Gangsters and Druglord. He is a former investigations editor at the Sunday Mirror and during ten years on Fleet Street covered subjects including child slavery, people smuggling, drugs and the Balkan wars.

2008-08-28 An Amazing book of survival and danger

Graham Johnson writes this book from the perpective of the man who the book is based on - Stephen French. Having met with Stephen and done hundreds of hours of interviews the book totaly feels like its being written from the man himself. The author writes the story from Stephens perspective to give a closer feeling to the the personal stories of his life as if hes telling them. The book has so many stories to tell of extrmely dangerous conflict situations between rival gangs, feuds with fellow crew members and the author does not hold back. The author says in the first few pages how he really wanted to get the reader a feeling of Stephens perspective. I really felt you got a very strong sense of the man from this book and read it in 2 days. This guy had many wild encounters for decades. Many people would surely be dead or incarcerated if they were in the same situations. Find out how he survived and how Stephen was able to make change his circumstances by turning his back on crime. A facinating read and clearly written book.