The Courier Mail (Australia)
July 8, 2006

Angels of Death
William Marsden and Julian Sher
Hodder, $35

MISUNDERSTOOD free-living motorcycle riders who like cruising in groups and prefer a life unbothered by meddlesome laws or highly organised criminal gangs, with a worldwide network ensuring the relatively smooth traffic of everything from stolen bikes to drugs to guns? This is at the core of this exhaustive study by Canadian-based investigative journalists Sher and Marsden as they dissect the inner world of the international Hells Angels organisation and its fellow travellers including, in Australia, such groups as the Gypsy Jokers, Finks and Black Uhlans among others. From the Milperra massacre to the high-profile bombing death of West Australian retired police officer Don Hancock, the chief suspect in the killing of a Gypsy Joker sitting near a campfire after an earlier run-in at Hancock's desert hotel, to the fast life and times of Australia's acknowledged, original amphetamine king Peter John Hill, once of the Hells Angels and now leading a far different, low-profile life on the edge of the outback desert; to a raft of equally eyebrow-raising case histories across the United States, Europe and Britain involving a revolving-door cast list of undercover agents and informers, Sher and Marsden have delivered 454 pages of sometimes fascinating, enlightening work from the history of what would become the outlaw bikie gangs to today's highly sophisticated networks which rival the best international police units.