BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - NON-FICTION

King Kong Theory (2006)  Virginie Despentes   This is a review of the English Edition, published by Serpent's Tail, rather than the French Edition. Let's get the negatives out of the way quickly because this is an important little book that might have got more praise if its faults had been more sincerely addressed by its Editors. It has three spectacularly interesting chapters on rape, prostitution and pornography that would have made excellent articles in some intelligent monthly. These sit oddly between an equally interesting introduction, in which Virginie Despentes places her book in some context, and an utterly daft rant at the end in which she lets vent to her furies. There are plenty of blank pages between chapters and the print is large so that this reads like a collection of articles or a pamphlet, scarcely a book at all. It is also so 'French' as to make it dangerously close to being dismissed in Anglo-Saxon circles. There are cultural differences

Billy Hill: Godfather of London (2008) Wensley Clarkson   Notorious: The Immortal Legend of the Kray Twins (2010) John George Pearson Peaky Blinders: The Aftermath - The Real Story Behind the Next Generation of Gangsters (2021) Carl Chinn   I have a reasonable library on crime, organised crime rather than the individual evil-doer though I have a few of those as well. These three books give us a general picture of the history of organised crime in Britain, largely but not exclusively in London. I will start in the middle of the story with the weakest book just to set the scene. Clarkson's Billy Hill is a pot boiler but anything that helps us understand the nature of the human condition has some value. This story of one of London's major gang lords does just this - despite itself. It is a weakly written book for the true crime market which seems to take villains' own tales at face value, over-relies on secondary evidence, fails to maintain continuity and gives little so