description: LINDA CALVEY IS BRITAIN'S MOST NOTORIOUS FEMALE GANGSTER and claims she is the inspiration behind Lynda La Plante's TV series Widows. Dubbed The Black Widow' because every man she has ever had a relationship with is either dead or in prison, she was a gangster's moll who became more dangerous than the men who fell beneath her spell.Mickey Calvey, the flashy armed robber who introduced her to crime and whose life was cut short by a police bullet, was the first to become entangled in her web. Then came Ronnie Cook, a tough, violent gangster who was jailed for his part in a million-pound robbery. He introduced her to Brian Thorogood who became her minder and, eventually, her lover. Finally, there was Danny Reece, the hitman she hired to kill Cook who couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. Calvey did the job herself and landed a life sentence for murder. She later married Reece in prison.THE BLACK is Calvey's extraordinary story as told to her friend and confidante Kate Kray, from the lavish lifestyle she had as a successful robber to her present life behind the bars of a top-security prison cell.KATE KRAY is thb bestselling author of Hard Bastards and presents a TV series based on the book for Channel 5. The former kissogram girl found instant celebrity in 1989 when she married gangland legend Ronnie Kray in Broadmoor. Her marriage gave her a unique insight into the underworld and helped her gain access to some of Britain's most notorious gangsters.Now a prolific crime writer, her other bestsellers include Natural Born Killers, Pretty Boy and The Free At Last. She is in constant demand as a pundit and TV presenter.CHESTER STERN, who worked with Kate Kray on the writing of this book, has been a writer and broadcaster on crime and police matters for over thirty-five years. A former head of the Press Bureau at Scotland Yard, he has lectured extensively on terrorism and the media in the UK, Europe and the USA. He was also Crime Correspondent of the Mail on Sunday for nineteen years and is past President of the Crime Reporters' Association.
language: English
title: The Black Widow: The Life and Crimes of Linda Calvey
titlecomplete: The Black Widow: The Life and Crimes of Linda Calvey
genres: True Crime, Biography
ratings_count: 24
publisher: Headline Book Publishing