The prison gates edged open. When the dapper, baby-faced young man stepped away from the armed wardens with their vicious dogs and into freedom, he walked slap bang into a posse of media. 'I'm going straight,' he announced, before speeding off in a waiting car. The press went after him and they weren't the only ones. It was January 2002 and, after serving his sentence for gunrunning, Paul Ferris was going straight. But would he be allowed to? Following the death of the last Godfather, Arthur Thompson, Ferris was one of the men tipped to take over Glasgow's organised crime scene and rule the streets of Glasgow and much farther afield. The cops believed Ferris had got away with too much and, when the time came for old scores to be settled, he would be on the receiving end. In the criminal world, memories are long.

Vendetta covers three eventful years of street life in Glasgow, Manchester, London, and Liverpool, exposing the brutal reality of these cities' underworlds and the characters involved in them - the crackhead hitman, the Iranian noble turned international gangster and killer, the English player who predicted his own assassination, the white slave trade, political corruption at the highest level, hit jobs, ambushes, duelling gangsters, bloody streets, torchings and a great deal more. When Paul Ferris left jail, he planned to write novels and film scripts. Little did he know his own life would be stranger than fiction. They tried to silence Paul Ferris but he is still here to tell the story - and it is some story.