They were an elite group of renegade Fleet Street crime reporters covering the most notorious British crime between the mid-1930s and the mid-1960s. It was an era in which murder dominated the front and inside pages of the newspapers - the 'golden age' of tabloid crime. Members of the Murder Gang knew one another well. They drank together in the same Fleet Street pubs, but they were also ruthlessly competitive in pursuit of the latest scoop. It was said that when the Daily Express covered a big murder story they would send four cars: one containing their reporters, the other three to block the road at crime scenes to stop other rivals getting through. As a matter of course, Murder Gang members listened in to police radios, held clandestine meetings with killers on the run, made huge payments to murderers and their families - and jammed potatoes into their rivals' exhaust pipes so their cars wouldn't start. These were just the tools of the trade; it was a far cry from modern reporting. Here, Neil Root delves into their world, examining some of the biggest crime stories of the era and the men who wrote them. In turns fascinating, shocking and comical, this tale of true crime, media and social history will have you turning the pages as if they were those newspapers of old.

The Metropolitan Police of the mid-twentieth century, in particular The Flying Squad and Obscene Publications Squad, has been described as 'the most routinely corrupt organisation in London'. Larger-than-life characters such as Ken Drury and Alfred 'Wicked Bill' Moody routinely fraternised with underworld figures, paid off witnesses and struck dodgy deals to get their man - regardless of whether he was innocent or guilty. And the problem went far beyond a couple of 'bent' coppers: in the end, fifty officers were prosecuted, while 478 took early retirement. Using Metropolitan Police files obtained under Freedom of Information, which have not been accessed since the 1970s, author Neil Root can finally tell the real story of how the Met became systemically corrupt, and how Sir Robert Mark, who became commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in 1972, finally cleaned it up.

On December 2nd, 2006, the naked body of a woman was discovered in woodland just south of the Suffolk satellite town of Ipswich. Over the next ten days, four further bodies were found. All were naked. All were prostitutes. All had worked in Ipswich's red light district. All five had been strangled.These tragic events caused a local, national and international media explosion. Police were drafted in from forces all over the country in a desperate effort to stop this terrifying serial murderer. The speed of developments stunned everybody, and then Tom Stephens, a 37 year-old supermarket worker from Ipswich who had known all five women and sold his story to a Sunday tabloid newspaper was arrested. Just days later, a 48 year-old forklift truck driver named Steven Wright was taken into custody, forensic teams swooping on his bed-sit in the middle of Ipswich's red light area, all in the full glare of the media spotlight. Wright was charged and remanded in custody to await trial whilst Stephens was bailed. The murders ceased, and the British public felt a collective surge of relief. The media had named both men, and Wright especially underwent a 'trial by media' even before he was charged.This is the shocking story of the Ipswich Killer. From the discovery of the bodies, the impact on the families of the victims, the biggest police investigation ever mounted in Suffolk, the trial and the verdict, and whether the outcome could have been prejudiced by the naming of the arrested men so early on. This is the story of a series of murders, which produced more fear and terror than any in Britain since the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper twenty-five years earlier.