Cocky: The Rise & Fall of Curtis Warren, Britain's Biggest Drug Baron

This book on English crime baron Curtis Cocky Warren is a nice look into European organized crime. Cocky was a major player in importing ecstasy, cocaine, marijuana and heroin into England through his Liverpool base and on England terms he was a John Gotti type figure. He rose from a football hooligan tough to the preeminent drug dealer of the UK. This book is totally from the law enforcement angle though and needs more insight from the criminals themselves to ever out the depiction but still it is a good look and interesting read if you are into true crime reads. Hopefully they will make some documentaries on Cocky or do some articles in Maxim or something so those of us stateside can learn more about this intriguing and fascinating drug lord from the UK.

I thought Cocky was a very well written Biography depicting the remarkable actions of England's biggest Drug Baron. References were spot on and the book flowed considerably well.worth a read.

If you like books about drugs and organised and disorganised crime then have a read of Cocky - well worth the effort

I'm from Liverpool so i could relate to the streets and names mentioned in it. I didnt really like the ending though.

This is a very disjointed book that really does not focus on our subject and does a poor job of tracking Cocky's rise to power.

I bought this on the basis the back cover stated "Thoroughly revised and updated", therefore assuming it would cover him being charged in Jersey, and subsequently jailed, however the story ends before that. Cannot understand why the authors have not truly updated the subject matter.

Being from Liverpool I was particularly interested to read this book. As far as the reliability of the information contained in the book is concerned, it cannot be faulted. In fact, it sort of read like an official report in places and lacked the writing skills to make it ‘gripping’. I must admit that I struggled to finish it. As an historical background to the issues and reasons behind the troubles in Toxteth it is much more interesting, but that is just a small part of the book.As far as the Cocky Watchman himself goes, I found him to be an interesting figure who is clearly very clever and charismatic. It is clear that as a youth he had a strong desire to become successful and rise above the poverty and desperation that surrounded him in Toxteth, it just a shame that he did not use his ability and brains for something more productive. Towards the end of the book we start to see how the pressure of being one of the world’s biggest drug dealers makes him paranoid resulting in him living in a safety ‘bubble’ that eventually leads to his downfall. It is such as shame that he refuses to write his own story, hearing it from his own mouth would be interesting.I must admit, even though I do not want to, that I did feel sorry for Curtis towards the end of the book. His treatment at the hands of the Dutch judicial system has been disgusting. There seems to have been underhanded dealings between the international police squads that resulted from the desperate need to capture him that has cast a shadow over the whole case.At the end of the day, the book is written in a journalistic style that can be boring at times and does not really provide anything more then what could be found in reading 90’s newspapers and Wikipedia.I give it 3 stars out of 5.

Easy factual read. If you are interested in Criminology relating to the "Liverpool Mafia" this book gives an insight into the movement of drugs in and around Merseyside.

This book started fairly well but often got bogged down in seemingly trivial avenues that really didn’t add anything to the story. As for the persona of the subject himself the book really gave no depth or insight. I see that it had three authors, which perhaps I should bear in mind for future books – presumably the publishers thought ‘the more the merrier’ might help the story along a bit. It’s not terrible, but doesn’t really go anywhere – I suppose I was expecting a bit more of a thrilling summary of events up to arrest and conviction. This is definitely one book I wouldn’t want to read again unfortunately.

Its not a bad book, tells the story of curtis warrens empire, sadly id seen a few tv programs about this and it put me off the reading process as i quite often thought "ive heard this before" so i found myself skimming through the pages instead of reading them properlyMy advice would be - read the book first before watching any TV programs or you will find yourself flicking through the pages like i did