Big Shots: The Chilling Inside Story of Carl Williams and the Gangland Wars

In 2003 Adam Shand, until then a finance journalist, naively set out to unravel Melbourne’s bloody gangland wars. A few months’ research, a guaranteed cover story. But his foray into the under-world took him deeper than that.

He became embroiled in a complex world where feuds raged between rival families, and where a new generation was clashing with the criminal Establishment.

Before long, he found himself counted as a friend by those who sometimes ended friendships with a hail of bullets.

Big Shots takes the reader into the heart of the city’s multi-billion dollar ‘disorganised crime’ scene, as Shand meets the key figures and suspects, including Carl and Roberta Williams, Mick Gatto, and many others. He discovers the human drama behind the brutal slayings that were splashed across the front pages, and in the process comes to question his objectivity. And even whether he is being used to further the players’ murderous ends.