Shadow Diplomacy: Lev Parnas and his Wild Ride from Brooklyn to Trump’s Inner Circle

Lev Parnas has seen just about everything. A wheeler-dealer from the streets of Brooklyn, his adventures took him to Moscow to Wall Street to Hollywood to Miami to the White House and, eventually, to prison. His fascinating, eye-opening story offers an insider’s view of how money and power actually work to keep the world running exactly the way some want it to.

“I was absolutely impressed with the narration and detail of Lev’s journey from his early days in Brooklyn to where he is and to what he is today. I absolutely recommend the reading of this book to anyone that wants to know about American politics under the Trump administration and the dirty tricks that they employed on a daily basis to get what they wanted, no matter who they might destroy in their obsession with doing that.” — Rob

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Fallen Angel: The Unlikely Rise of Walter Stadnick in the Canadian Hells Angels

One man’s improbable rise to power in one of the world’s most violent criminal organizations. Fallen Angel sheds light on how the enigmatic and dangerous Hells Angels gained momentum to dominate organized crime in Canada.

“The writing in this book is much more professional and well-researched than any other book I’ve seen on the subject. Mr. Langton has gone to great lengths to get the details correct and weave a fascinating story without wandering into hyperbole.” —C J Petes

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Showdown: How the Outlaws, Hells Angels and Cops Fought for Control of the Streets

When the old-school Mafia in Hamilton fell apart following the death of Johnny “Pops” Papalia, a frenzy ensued for who would supply, sell and control Ontario’s drug and vice traffic. Vestiges of the old Italian outfits maintained a loose hand in drug trafficking until a series of murders and screw-ups did what no other organization had been able to do – unseated the Mafia from the hub of Ontario’s vice pipeline. The leader of the Hells Angels, Walter Stadnick, had had his eye on Canada’s most lucrative drug market for years, but had been kept out largely due to the mafia syndicate that only reluctantly employed bikers of any stripe for their dirty work, and Papalia’s refusal to work the Hells Angels.

A war to fill the power vacuum in Hamilton, and Ontario, was to begin, and would hinge on the broadly supported Hells Angels under the leadership of Stadnick, a handful of smaller clubs too proud or too useless to join them, and Mario “The Wop” Parente’s Outlaws, the top motorcycle club in Ontario since the 70s and the main barrier to the Hells Angels’ takeover. Other challengers would emerge from the ever-shifting allegiances of the biker world, including the Bandidos from south of the border, whose presence in the province would end in a bloodbath now known as the Shedden Massacre.

Against all of these competing interests stood the various law enforcement agencies responsible for keeping the general peace and shutting down as much of their operations as they could. By building on interviews with Parente, members of the police and a variety of sources and informants in the underworld, Jerry Langton weaves together the violent tapestry that connects them all, laying open the world of organized crime in Ontario as never before.

With frightening and compelling detail, Showdown lets readers experience firsthand the personalities and day-to-day workings behind the brutal and deadly rivalries that mark one piece of Canada’s criminal underworld.

“Showdown brings a finale to all of Mr Langton’s previous novels. With Showdown, Jerry recaps Walter Stadnick’s rise to power Fallen Angel: The Unlikely Rise of Walter Stadnick and the Canadian Hells Angels. He reminds us of the conflict across Canada at the time. Then, He adds another prosective. He tells us what happened next! He brings us up to date. He tells us where we are today. He even makes a few predictions. If you enjoyed Fallen Angel and Biker: Inside the Notorious World of an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang you’ll like this one.” — Victor “Preacher” Shurtz

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Cold War: How Organized Crime Works in Canada and Why It’s Just About to Get More Violent

Organized crime in Canada has long been dominated by the Hells Angels and their friends in the Rizzuto crime family. Over the years, they have brought many street gangs into their alliance, most notably the Indian Posse, many sets of the Crips, the Independent Soldiers and the Red Scorpions. The key to their allegiance is that the Hells Angels and the Rizzutos could always get the commodities — marijuana, cocaine, meth, Ecstasy, cash, steroids — that fed organized crime. But their strong-arm tactics have created an opposition including the Cotroni family, the Musitanos, the Outlaws, the Bandidos, the Rock Machine — all less familiar names to Canadians. And the opposition is now standing up to the stalwart Canadian kingpins. Canada’s crime families, bikers and youth gangs are waging a war for supremacy across the country, and innocent people often get in the way.

In Cold War, bestselling author Jerry Langton explains the history of the rivalries, the current tensions and the build-up of anti–Hells Angels/Rizzuto family forces in Canada. In unprecedented detail, Langton outlines the risk and the fallout of Canada’s true-crime cold war.

“I always loved Jerry Langton’s books and this one is no exception.” — JLG

“I did not receive my book as of yet. Please hurry and send my book. I am going away.” — anonymous

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Gangland: The Rise of the Mexican Drug Cartels from El Paso to Vancouver

A frightening look at Mexico’s new power elite — the Mexican drug cartels

The members of Mexico’s drug cartels are among the criminal underworld’s most ambitious and ruthless entrepreneurs. Supplanting the once dominant Colombian cartels, the Mexican drug cartels are now the major distributor of heroin and cocaine to the U.S. and Canada. Not only have their drugs crossed north of the border, so have the cartels (in 2009, 230 active Mexican drug cartels have been reported in U.S. cities). In Gangland, bestselling author Jerry Langton details their frightening stranglehold on the economy and daily life of Mexico todayand what it portends for the future of Mexico and its neighbours.

Offering a firsthand look from members of law enforcement, politicians, journalists, and people involved in the drug trade in Mexico and Canada, Gangland sheds a harsh light on the multibillion dollar industry that is the drug trade, the territorial wars, and the on-the-street reality for the United States, with the importation of narco-terrorists. With the unstinting realism and keen analysis that have made him an internationally respected journalist, Langton offers the bleak prospects of what a collapsed government in Mexico might lead toa new Mexican warlord state not unlike Somalia.

An unflinching examination of the world’s most lucrativeand deadliestdrug cartel, Gangland lets readers explore, with brutal clarity, the newest front on America’s latest war.

• Details the emergence of the Mexican drug cartelsthe transformation of middlemen who ferried drugs from Bolivia and Colombia to the U.S. and Canada into self-styled entrepreneurs
• Describes how the growth of the cartels led to violent territorial warswith Felipe Calderon declaring war on the cartels in 2006
• Offers a frightening look at how much the incursion of the drug cartels has affected American life and business Wachovia and Bank of America have been found guilty of laundering cartel profits

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Rat: How the World’s Most Notorious Rodent Clawed Its Way to the Top

Note: This is about rats, the rodents, not informants

From its origins in the swamps of Southeast Asia to its role in the medieval Black Death to its unshakeable niche in modern urban centers, the rat has incredible evolutionary advantages. Combining biology with history, and social commentary with firsthand experience, Rat dispels the myths and exposes the little-known facts about the ubiquitous rodent.

Plague carrier, city vermin, and an out-and-out menace to modern man, the rat, like death and taxes, is a certain fixture in humankind’s history. Rats are found in virtually every nook and cranny of the globe and their numbers are ever increasing. Rats are always adapting and they seem to outwit any attempts by humans to wipe them out. What makes the rat such a worthy adversary and how has it risen to the top of the animal kingdom?

• Rats have been discovered living in meat lockers. The rats in there simply grew longer hair, fatter bodies, and nested in the carcasses they fed upon.
• A female rat can, under good conditions, have well over 100,000 babies in her lifetime.
• A rat can fall fifty feet onto pavement and skitter away unharmed.
• A rat’s jaws can exert a force more than twenty times as powerful as a human’s.
• The front side of a rat’s incisors are as hard as some grades of steel.

In Rat: How the World’s Most Notorious Rodent Clawed Its Way to the Top, Jerry Langton explores the history, myth, physiology, habits, and psyche of the rat and even speculates on the future of the rat and how they might evolve over the next few hundred years.

“This expertly crafted book is a true classic and one of the most informative books on rats that I have found. It is easy and entertaining reading with loads of interesting information. I found that the mystery of the rat faded away as I learned more about their biology and predictable habits. The author does not pull any punches about the damage done by rats nor his observations about people who keep rats as pets. Most of all, it describes the rat as a resilient and highly adaptable creature that thrives living everywhere that humans go.”
— Voltman

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The Hard Way Out: My Life with the Hells Angels and Why I Turned Against Them

The shocking true story of a Canadian biker turned informant, in the vein of Gangland Undercover and Under and Alone, now a national bestseller

Dave Atwell was a regular suburban Canadian kid who rose to the heights of society, rubbing elbows with billionaires as a personal security specialist before getting involved with some of the country’s most notorious gangsters as a member of first the Para-Dice Riders and then the Hells Angels. He was sergeant-at-arms for Toronto’s notorious Downtown chapter of the Hells Angels, and he saw it all: the drug trafficking, the violence and the structure of the organization. First his involvement with the gang cost him his career in personal security, and then it threatened to cost him everything.

Atwell opted to work with the police, becoming the highest-ranking Hells Angel in history to co-operate with law enforcement. Wearing the gang’s colours as a soldier among the men who called him a brother, Atwell reported the Hells Angels’ activities to law enforcement. He risked his life providing valuable information aimed at taking down the club.

In the harrowing and revelatory The Hard Way Out, Atwell retraces his days living a dual life as both biker and informant, surrounded by major drug trafficking and the violent, paranoid and increasingly suspicious bikers who stood to lose their livelihoods and potentially their freedom unless they found the rat they knew was hidden in their midst. Written by bestselling crime author Jerry Langton, this is a high-octane true story that will have you on the edge of your seat.

“Quick read and well written. Left me feeling really bad for him … even if he did Betray them. Hope his new life goes well.” — Kristy

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The Fiction Books

Read these at your own risk. They were contractual filler, and I can’t guarantee that I was anywhere close to sober when I wrote them.

The Rest

These books are all pretty good, but might be out of print or otherwise hard to get. In fact, The Notorious Bacon brothers was banned in Canada, and I have seen it on sale for as much as $2,500 (they go for about $30 now). If you can find any of these, let me know.

If you don’t like Amazon or Barnes & Noble, contact me and I’ll probably be able to get you a copy