Award-winning crime journalist Paul Anderson, author of the bestselling Dirty Dozen, takes you through the chilling criminal slayings that continue to shock Melbourne, linking the players and events that make up Melbourne's underworld crime scene. Anderson traces the complicated web back to the Painters & Dockers' Union power struggle that claimed at least forty lives between the 1950s and the early 1980s, and delves into the more recent wave of murders that has seen Melbourne become a virtual criminal killing field.
The execution of self-styled gangster Alphonse Gangitano in January
1998 sparked a deadly chain-reaction that has so far led to the deaths of a further 26 people and shows no sign of relenting. While a special police taskforce codenamed "Purana' has been set up to investigate a number of the slayings and their common links to the lucrative amphetamine trade, the killings continue, and individual motives arise: revenge, greed, overblown pride. and the influence of crime movies.
From crime scene to funeral, Shotgun City takes you inside the lives of each victim, uncovering the links and offering the ultimate insider's knowledge of Melbourne's brutal underworld war.