Angels of Death: Inside the Biker Gangs' Crime Empire Book

Hmmm.....

Whilst this book was informative on the organisation and structure of the Hells Angels, especially as they branched out to become a world-wide (rather than solely American) club, something with this book just didn't sit right with me.

A sensational account of the activities of the Hells Angels as an international criminal organisation, given the title it shouldn't be surprising that this is extremely one-sided. Much of the 'evidence' presented is taken from interviews with the police and prosecutors, or taken from police transcripts and affidavits, but with the vast majority of cases yet to be proven via court trial I have an extremely hard time taking this as 'fact'. An early incident in the book possibly set me on guard for the rest - when describing the murder of Cynthia Garcia, who was last seen alive on CCTV with a couple of bikers, the authors state that on entering the Angels clubhouse and seeing the situation within Cynthia was 'horrified'. Now, unless the authors have psychic powers I have no idea how in the hell they would know how she felt and this made me leery of totally accepting anything else written within.

For a book that sought to expose the criminal activity of the club it's probably a surprising side-effect that, to me, it seemed more a damning indictment of the law enforcement side. With corruption (in the form of individuals leaking information to the people who were being investigated, or taking bribes), incompetence and in-fighting ruining long-standing, extremely expensive investigations and then with those cases that did get to trial usually being thrown out, I felt that the only people who came out not looking like complete arses were the undercover officers who were put into extremely stressful situations, often for years at a time, only for their hard work to be completely undermined by the time the investigations were closed. Probably not the intended aim, but so it goes...