The Black Pearl

The Black Pearl

The Glasgow Chronicles – Book 12

On the first of February, 1978, Glasgow city councillor Brian McCann has just finished chairing a licensing committee meeting in the City Chambers, when a shot rings out on George Square and the sixty-six year old elected member for Possil falls to the ground, fatally wounded at point blank range.

Elsewhere in the mankiest city of the empire, things are starting to look up for The Mankys, one of Glasgow’s up-and-coming young organised criminal gangs. The dark days of keeping their heads down, following the unexpected return to the city of Pat Molloy, The Big Man, from Spain, two years previously, appears to have passed and the fruits of their labours continue to pour into Donna The Prima Donna’s illegal company coffers like never before.

Meanwhile, Tony Gucci’s wife, Kim Sui Zhang, with the rest of the lassies, aka The Posse, have been busy planning the first ever International Scottish Fashion Week. After two years of hard graft, hosting the world’s top fashion glitterati in two of the city’s swankiest hotels, The Albany and The Stilton Hotels, is now within their sights.

Life appears to be rosy for Tony Gucci, who has plans that will make The Mankys richer beyond their wildest dreams. However, an unexpected drug bust of one of their key dealers in Springburn, forces The Mankys to take their eye off the ball and to concentrate their energies across on the Red Road, where they believe a ferret is hiding, who could bring all that they’ve worked for down around their ears.

Ian Todd’s The Black Pearl, is the 12th book in The Glasgow Chronicles series of novels that follow in the footsteps of Tony Gucci and The Mankys from the mid 1960s to the late 1970s.

Often described in Amazon reviews as “The best and most authentic street-crime novels to have come out of Glasgow,” The Black Pearl is full of the dodgiest and craziest characters ever to stagger across the pages of a master storyteller.