Behind Bars - by Mike Gerrard (Paperback)

About the Book

Award-winning travel and drinks writer Mike Gerrard takes readers on a centuries-long journey highlighting the most bizarre - and expensive - alcohol-related crimes all while revealing the inside world of booze: how it has been distilled, legislated, imbibed, and infused into culture and society for hundreds of years.

Book Synopsis

Behind Bars is filled with stories both ancient and urgent of what happens when alcohol meets crime, from illicit stills in the Scottish Highlands to moonshine in the USA, rum smuggled by Caribbean pirates to the roaring times of Prohibition, current-day gangs selling millions of dollars' worth of fake Bordeaux, and the often-unsolved cases of people walking into a liquor store, stealing whiskey bottles worth tens of thousands of dollars, and walking out, never to be seen again.

Award-winning travel and drinks writer Mike Gerrard takes readers on a centuries-long journey highlighting the most bizarre - and expensive - alcohol-related crimes all while revealing the inside world of spirits, how they have been distilled, legislated, imbibed, and infused into our culture for hundreds of years. Featuring colorful tangents and detailed appendices, Behind Bars will whet the whistle of any curious reader. Spanning the stories of ancient wine swindlers in Pompeii to the modern radiocarbon-dating techniques used by today's cutting-edge scientists to investigate suspect bottles of expensive alcohol, from million-dollar robberies of wine cellars buried deep underground to whiskey rings surrounding the highest reaches of the Presidency, Gerrard smartly and swiftly reveals that the link between alcohol and crime is a never-ending story.

Review Quotes

"Behind Bars is an entertaining read... weaving together the distant and recent history of booze-related crime in captivating stories of smuggling, moonshining, and high-stakes heists. It's sure to steal the attention of lovers of libations and true crime alike."

About the Author

Mike Gerrard is an award-winning travel and drinks writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, The Times of London, The Huffington Post, and BBC Travel, among others. His life as a travel and drinks writer has led to him drinking vodka for breakfast in Siberia, cognac in Cognac, sherry in Jerez, port in Oporto, champagne in Champagne, rum in Jamaica, jenever in Amsterdam, gin in Iceland, beer at the Great American Beer Festival, bourbon in Kentucky, whisk(e)y in Tennessee and Scotland, and visiting distilleries all over the world. He is the author of Cask Strength and over 40 travel guidebooks. For more information, visit his website traveldistilled.com.