9237020488?profile=originalBy David Amoruso

With the festive Holiday season upon us, we at Gangsters Inc. felt it was time to point our readers in the right direction when it comes to the best presents. Everything from great deals to enormous steals. Irish organized crime gave a good example as they offered its members a “supermarket” stocked with shelves full of drugs and guns.

Irish newspaper The Independent broke the news yesterday, reporting, “On the 'supermarket shelves' they found quantities of drugs ranging from heroin to cocaine, cannabis resin and herbal cannabis, as well as a sawn-off shotgun and a couple of hundred rounds of ammunition for two firearms.”

Dublin police are questioning the suspected 58-year-old owner of the “supermarket” who, The Independent writes, is “a former associate of Derek 'Maradona' Dunne, who was one of Ireland's most notorious underworld figures and was shot dead in a row at his home in Amsterdam in 2000.” They also suspect him of being a key player in a Dublin trafficking gang.

For more on this interesting story check out The Independent.

A supermarket filled with drugs and guns. That scene from the film The Boondock Saints in which the main characters go shopping for an arsenal of guns (and rope) in a gun-filled room run by an Irish gang suddenly doesn’t seem so far-fetched after all! (Scroll to the end of this article for a video clip of the scene.)

Because guns and drugs are kind of a touchy (illegal) subject, Gangsters Inc. will provide you with a different type of ware. The best books and movies dealing with the colorful and brutal world of gangsters and mobsters.

Let’s kick off with the Irish since they were so nice to give me the inspiration for this piece.

Irish organized crime in Europe is well represented. Irish gangsters are operating all over Britain and mainland Europe, from rainy The Netherlands to sunny Spain. One of the most infamous chapters in Irish gangland history is the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin. Her investigative work got her in trouble with several Irish drug lords who ordered her killed. The story was turned into two movies: When the Sky Falls, (2000), starring Joan Allen as Sinead Hamilton and Veronica Guerin (2003), starring Cate Blanchett.

There have also been many books dealing with the murder of Guerin, the Irish mob, and crime boss John Gilligan who ordered the murder. Books like Gangster: The Biography of International Drug Trafficker John Gilligan.

In the United States, the past year was all about the trial and conviction of Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger. Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill wrote a more in-depth follow-up to their 2001 book Black Mass titled Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss which offers readers more insight into his childhood while also detailing his criminal career and eventual capture.

Boston and the Irish are (or should I now say were?) the favorite topics of Hollywood producers and writers. Every film set in Boston seems to have a little bit of gangster flavor. Be it masterpieces such as Gone Baby Gone and Mystic River or a laugh-your-ass-off-funny movie like The Heat in which Sandra Bullock takes on a Boston drug boss.

On television The Brotherhood, loosely based on the brothers Bulger, did okay, but was never able to capture audiences like The Sopranos did.

Ah yes, The Sopranos. What a show! No matter what the current situation of organized crime is, on the silver screen the Italian-American Mafia still reigns supreme. We’ll see what offers we can present to you for Christmas. And you better not refuse!

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