67 books like Hell's Angels

This was one of the first books I read as part of my research about pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy.

It has a bibliography and footnotes, but it reads more like an adventure novel. You can read it for research, entertainment, or both. Everything in this book really happened. It’s one of the best starting points for someone to learn about piracy in the early 1700s.

I found this telling of the Shedden massacre of eight Bandidos at the hands of a mix of club mates and deranged wannabes, including a one-time failed police officer who was looking to reinvent himself as an outlaw biker player, very affecting, reading as it does like an almost Shakespearian real-life tragedy.

Edwards, along with Jerry Langton one of the key chroniclers of the Canadian outlaw biker scene, tells the stories of the dead men, introducing a group ranging from established bikers to probationers, loners to family men, and petty criminals to ordinary working stiffs; laying out how they all came to be facing their death one after another in a Nazi fantasist’s barn.

One of my reasons for starting to write about the UK outlaw biker scene in particular was that no one else seemed to be treating it seriously. That all changed when Tony Thompson, a highly respected journalist with a track record of highly readable and successful books on the UK gangland and crime scene produced this.

This book is the biography of ex-Outlaws MC member Daniel "Snake Dog" Boone, but through it, Thompson tells the wider story of the development of the UK outlaw biker scene since the eighties and how it has been affected by international biker politics, up to and including the 2007 murder of Gerry Tobin. Thoroughly recommended and essential reading for anyone interested in the club scene in England. I’ve said that if this had come out before my first biker book, the chances are I’d have never finished writing it.

When I’m reading about the biker scene what I’m looking for is the reality that underlies the public image and stereotypes. Jerry Langton doesn’t come across as a big fan of bikers but he’s well connected enough to speak to senior players and he’s a professional writer, so what he has to say is very readable, and to me, informative.

Through telling the extraordinary story of five foot four Walter "Nurget" Stadnick’s rise to criminally visionary national president of the Hell's Angels this book provides one of the best overviews of the development of the outlaw biker world in Canada, the Canadian biker wars, and the involvement of biker clubs in Canada in organised crime (although as a niggle it’s crying out for a map).

The books I’m recommending have all been key sources of insight in differing ways into the realities of the club worlds and cultures. This is a definite recommendation as one of the best “informed outsider’s” overviews I found.

It’s something of a rarity in the outlaw book world being a book by what seems to be a very well-informed and connected outsider (although I understand there has also been criticism of the content) which strives and manages to present a view that seems both balanced and nuanced. I like it because it doesn’t whitewash, nor does it condemn, instead it tries to show and explain.

Australia has a strong bikie culture that draws on a long tradition of ‘mateship’ and this book gives a glimpse behind the scenes of the rules and rituals of club membership, as well as the history of clubs in Australia.

Danny Greene is a bad role model but a great protagonist. A former US Marine and union boss convicted in federal court of embezzling, he transitioned into organized crime by doing enforcement work for the Cleveland Mafia. However, he soon branches out on his own in the most brazen ways possible, incurring the wrath of his former associates. Murders, an extended bombing campaign and Greene’s work supplying intel to federal agents all culminate in a conclusion that has real consequences – the downfall of La Cosa Nostra in Cleaveland in 1977. It’s hard not to empathize with the crazy-brave Greene, standing shirtless in plain sight in front of his headquarters as the Mafia plots his death. When a criminal is this kind of character, it’s easy for a reader to lay polite society aside and immerse inside that world, enough so to root for a bad guy.      

This work came out in the Roaring Twenties, but the gangsters of that decade had nothing on the 19th-century outfits like the Dead Rabbits and the Gas House Gang.

When the dive bars have names like the Tub of Blood and they’re kept in business by the likes of Razor Riley, One-Lung Curran, and Stumpy Malarkey, you can’t go wrong. But to me the most compelling part was Asbury’s account of New York’s horrendous Civil War draft riots.

The Molly Maguires of Pennsylvania were born in opposition to that same draft, after a Protestant Republican allied with the coal industry used conscription to try to rid the coal fields of Irish Catholic Democrats and mine labor activists before a crucial election. 

This book is the biography of Henry Hill, who, at the age of eleven, began working as an assistant for a boss of the Lucchese crime family in Manhattan. The book was turned into the movie Goodfellas, with Ray Liotta playing the role of Hill.

Fast-paced and filled with brutally violent incidents, Wise Guy portrays Henry Hill’s involvement in the life of the crime organization. In 1980, twenty-five years after he began working with the Lucchese family, Hill was arrested for heroin trafficking. Knowing he would be convicted at trial and would receive a lengthy sentence, and understanding that members of the family would likely have him murdered in prison, Hill testified under oath to federal prosecutors in return for admission into the Witness Protection Program.

I have never ugly cried from a book as hard as I did for Sinner’s Creed. Deep down, I knew what would happen. I knew [sorta] how it would end, but held out hope for a different outcome. Dirk and Saylor’s love is pure despite the darkness around them. Dirk is devoted to Saylor and she shares that same level of commitment. This book tore me apart in the most perfect way.

Undeniable is the raw and dirty story of Eva and Deuce. As the children of leaders of outlaw motorcycle clubs, they have expectations placed on them. These pressures both drive them apart and together at the same time. It’s not a pretty tale. It’s complicated. Everything is in their way, but they persevere. They go through hell to be together. It’s not the typical love story, but it’s theirs.