Noir thriller brings home brutal lessons of botched gambling laws

"You're a big man, but you're in bad shape. With me it's a full-time job. Now behave yourself." It's one for the film buffs, a quote that every self-respecting cinephile should know off by heart. I'm sure you've all got it.

That's right: Michael Caine as Jack Carter in the 1971 noir classic Get Carter. It's the scene where the shady London gangster Caine, having travelled north to the wilds of Newcastle to find out the truth about his brother's death, finds himself in a lawless urban landscape comprising what director Mike Hodges described as "the sleaziness and corruption festering in the city's underbelly".

Caine arrives by train at Newcastle Central, to the background of a newspaper headline reading 'Gaming War Rocks City', and his quest finally brings him to a meeting with the tubby and unscrupulous fruit machine baron Cliff Brumby (played by Bryan Moseley, better known as the less menacing Alf Roberts off Coronation Street), who fancies his chances against the younger, fitter man but ends up being flung off the top of a brutalist multi-storey car park, itself a symbol of the cronyism and double-dealing that had infected the region, ever since the introduction of Britain's well-intentioned but clumsy 1960 Betting and Gaming Act had sucked all sorts of dodgy money into a newly created void.

In film noir as in real life, mobsters and Mafiosi, many from the US, some home-grown, flooded the country's deregulated clubs and nightspots with gaming machines, constantly searching for fertile new markets in a country fresh out of post-war austerity. Of course, with financial opportunity came greed, rivalry and all manner of unpleasantness, which is where Bandit Country comes in.

It's hard to imagine that even such a classy operator as Jamie Reid (author of the award-winning Doped, the masterful saga of racehorse nobbling in the 1960s) could have timed his latest book to coincide with the furore surrounding the Gambling Commission's clumsy attempts to impose heavy-handed restrictions on the nation's gamblers, but by hook or by crook he's managed it, in a story that channels the hard-edged realism of Get Carter into a salutary thriller.

What we're threatened with now is another well-intentioned scheme that threatens to open the door to unregulated and unsavoury elements who are nothing if not ruthlessly adept at spotting rich pickings. It all has a familiar ring to it.

Organised crime in the US had made a nice living out of rigged slot machines for a good while, but it was now in need of new markets for its wares, and Londoner Vincent Luvaglio, with his less unsavoury brother Michael, was their man, although a run-in with the Kray twins persuaded him that the provinces, with all their untapped potential, and Newcastle in particular, would be a good place to relocate his seedy empire.

So began a real-life mobster tale that mined the same gritty, industrial and uncompromising seam as Hodges' film, starting with simple swindling in the pubs and clubs, sinking first into backhanders and payoffs, then further into rampant corruption at the heart of city politics, and finally, of course, into the depths of human nature, encompassing as many of the Ten Commandments as you can name, from envy and greed to jealousy and bloody murder. And lots of arson, although I'm not sure that's covered by the Commandments.

The parable may be about what happens when the powers-that-be unthinkingly create an environment in which regulated pastimes and pleasures can turn into rampant exploitation and mortal danger, but the read is a heady yet cynical, historical yet entirely topical, trawl through the grimiest bits of humanity, where friends become disposable enemies and the innocent become the guilty, where the 'One-Armed Bandit Murder' is grisly headline news.

Of course, the cartoonish Mafia characters, like Tony 'Ducks' Corallo and 'Italian Albert' Dimes stick in the imagination, and the descent of Luvaglio, freshly renamed as Vince Landa (to seem less Italian, apparently), into the heart of darkness is a compelling thread. But the really scary stuff concerns the heights of power to which the tawdriness and sleaze ascends.

Yes, you might recall disgraced architect John Poulson, and maybe his dealings with former north-eastern folk heroes like corrupt councillor T Dan Smith and the unlovable alderman Andrew Cunningham, both nest-featherers on a massive scale. But as the mobsters fought among themselves in their sharp suits and swanky cars, and local officials and police chiefs queued up to be paid off, so high-ranking government ministers also lined their pockets and furthered their careers. Remember that nice Reginald Maudling, chancellor of the exchequer, home secretary, almost PM? Lovely chap, good Tory egg. Actually, not so much.

That the bright lights blew their bulbs and it all ended in bankruptcy, betrayal and killing is perhaps no surprise. The newly wealthy will go to almost any lengths to keep what they've got, it seems; hence the dead body in the back of the Jaguar and the kingpin holed up in exile on Majorca while the seedy and greedy squabble over who did what to whom.

It's a gangster story (a la Peaky Blinders, as the cover blurb would have it), with guns, girls and slicked-back hair, but it's also uncomfortably close to home and should be echoing loud in the ears of those who are overseeing the reform of gambling legislation six decades down the line.

Bandit Country, by Jamie Reid, is published by Bonnier Books UK (£9.99)
Peter Thomas

An ode to racehorse ownership

British racing cannot afford to lose owners and anyone tasked with helping with their retention need look no further than Farewell To Free Love.

Centred around the modest but capable Mick Appleby-trained Free Love, the book is the third and final instalment of a trilogy by Tony Linnett, part of the syndicate which owned the daughter of Equiano.

A Year of Free Love was first, which was followed by Another Year of Free Love, but Linnett, a Kent-based former primary school headteacher, always planned a concluding farewell tour.

It is easy to see why too.

In her pomp, Free Love had reached an official rating of 90, putting her on the verge of accruing some black type, which would make her a more valuable broodmare prospect when the time came to disband the syndicate and sell her.

The author leaves no stone unturned as he documents the desire to achieve that black type, but the initial backdrop of the book is the Covid-19 pandemic, or "catastrophe" as Linnett labels it.

I don't suppose anyone relishes being reminded of those first few months of lockdown, and Linnett's level of detail means it is easy to be transported back to those dark days of lockdown, daily Covid cases and little else.

However, Linnett's detail when discussing Free Love is equally impressive and, bar the slick camera work of a Netflix documentary, is probably as close as one will get to a behind-the-scenes glimpse of racehorse ownership at the coalface.

Nothing seems to escape Linnett, who lays bare all the figures involved plus every thought and discussion that goes into owning a horse who was not able to win again during the period the book covers, although that does little to diminish her number-one fan's affection for her.

The book is written in diary-style, so is easy to follow, as are Linnett's words, which will be nothing new to anyone who has been involved in the game, although that's not really the point.

Beyond talk of monthly payments and handicap marks, the enthusiasm Linnett has for the sport shines through and finding a more sincere and passionate account about ownership must be hard to find, especially when one remembers Free Love isn't exactly Sea The Stars.

Whether intended or not, the book could appeal to someone with just a passing interest in racing as Linnett, sadly diagnosed with terminal cancer on his journey with Free Love, keeps things simple, not overcomplicating what can be a complicated sport.

"I have a plea for anyone reading this book who loves their racing and dreams of getting into ownership one day," he writes in an author's note at the start. "Do it!"

You can't say fairer than that, and after the ups and downs Linnett has been through with Free Love he's well positioned to comment.

Farewell To Free Love, by Tony Linnett, is published independently and available to buy on Amazon for £9.99. All proceeds go to the Bob Champion Cancer Trust.
James Burn

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