Killers, Crooks and Cons
Scotland's Crimes of the Century

Reg McKay

Category True Crime
Pub Date
ISBN 1845021452
Extent 352pp
Price £10.99
Format Paperback, 234 x 156mm
Plate/Illustrations4x8 pp b/w and colour



Scotland has a heritage you don’t often see on shortbread tins. Killers, crooks and cons – these are as Scottish as whisky, tartan and haggis. Going decade by decade through the twentieth century and telling the true stories of crime on Scotland's mean streets, Killers, Crooks and Cons is an exploration of the dark side of our country’s past.

Crime columnist and bestselling author Reg McKay (The Last Godfather, Villains, Murder Capital) trawls through the crimes that horrified twentieth-century Scotland. Race riots; con merchants; cop killers and cops who kill; murderers who hope to evade detection by strewing body parts across the countryside, slicing off fingerprints or burning corpses to a cinder – it’s all happened in Scotland and it shows no sign of stopping.

While Scotland may have more than its share of explorers, inventors and great minds, we also have more than our share of violence, horror and crime. This is a brutal, compelling and vital examination of the uglier history of our country’s near past, from the Godfather of True Crime.

Author information

Trailing Glasgow’s meanest streets for years as a social worker, in 1998 Reg McKay found himself unable to face the grey-faced men in grey suits so he left to write. A widely published investigative journalist, he has been a crime columnist for the Daily Record and is the author of ten bestselling books including The Ferris Conspiracy, Vendetta and Villains with Paul Ferris as well as The Last Godfather and Murder Capital.