Drug Traffic, Al McCoy’s magisterial history of Australian organised crime from the beginning, concluded in 1980. Smack Express takes the story through to the end of the century and describes how organised crime became involved in the growing drug trade from the late 1970s. It covers major figures and developments such as Bob Trimbole and the Griffith mafia, the Mr Asia syndicate, the 1980s gang war, Neddy Smith, Mikel Hurley, and the Vietnamese gangs around Cabramatta in the 1990s, when some 60 people were murdered.
Clive Small is a former detective, whose successes included the arrest of Ivan Milat, and assistant police commissioner. Tom Gilling is a novelist and Small’s literary collaborator.