Crack House

The Incredible True Story of the Man Who Took On London's Crack Gangs and Won

By: Harry Keeble, Kris Hollington

Narrated by: Damian Lynch

Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Crack House takes the listener into the dark heart of our cities' most violent and terrifying places, showing how the war on drugs can only be won by constant and forceful vigilance. The bastard offspring of cocaine, crack first entered the UK in the early 1990s. By the end of the decade, Britain's inner cities were in the midst of a crack epidemic, with users being responsible for a massive proportion of crime. Communities, especially in London, were crying out for help, but there were only two specialist units in the whole of the capital.

One of them, Haringey Drugs Squad, embarked on a war on crack, aiming to shut down all 100 crack houses in their borough in one year. Amazingly, they did it. Even more amazingly, in the subsequent 12 months all black-on-black killings in Haringey ceased, and burglaries and muggings fell massively.

In Crack House, Harry Keeble describes in heart-stopping fashion the raids and arrests, as well as the beatings, stabbings, and shootings he witnessed as leader of the Haringey Drugs Squad and their war on drugs.

©2008 Harry Keeble (P)2011 Audible Ltd

Entertaining and enlightening

Fascinating glimpse into the fight by a few good cops against the ever-rising tide of drug merchants in a north London borough. The drug squad's success in the face of bureaucratic and institutional apathy, and downright ineptitude, is, I think, a testament to their dedication and the author's leadership... or at least that's how the story reads. I've queued up his next book "Baby X" to see where he goes from here. Damian Lynch is fast becoming one of my favourite narrators.

An Entertaining Story About a Disturbing Subject

What about Damian Lynch’s performance did you like?

I think the narration of a book is critical to how much you enjoy it, and Damian Lynch did a fantastic job. His accent and tone gave this a gritty "cop" atmosphere that really matched well with the story. He was very easy to listen to, and gave the story credibility - I could easily believe that he was the major character telling the story; he should be commended for his performance.

Any additional comments?

This was a really entertaining audiobook. The story was very interesting - telling the tale of a police unit that shut down crack houses in a borough of London. The narration was excellent, and the story easily absorbing. The author easily conveyed the horrendous impact of crack - in terms of contributing to violent crime, and the human degradation. If I had one criticism it would be in the pace and lack of detail in how they went about identifying and crashing the houses; while there was good description about the houses and the overall story of shutting down the houses, the recounting of some of the raids seemed almost too easy - which clearly it wouldn't have been. But as an entertaining story, this was very enjoyable.

This book is hot, steamy mess.

I gave up after 3 hours of listening. It's a bunch of micro-stories that barely follow the loose plot and jump around from minute to minute. It's very hard to follow along.