Margaret has been following with the avid interest of a crime-novel aficionado the latest developments in Glasgow’s underworld gang war. Last week, assassins gunned down Kevin “The Gerbil” Carroll while he sat and waited outside a local ASDA supermarket. That scene itself was enough to pique interest, since the rate of gun violence is so very much lower here than in the States. But Margaret had to follow up the question of how the ruthless enforcer for the Daniel mob — got nicknamed after a cute furry rodent.
So — avid reader of Glasgow news that she is — Margaret tracked down an article that cites and explains several of the Glasgow gang members’ nicknames. (I admire the tag for Tam “The Licensee” McGraw. I keep envisioning a surreptitious encounter in a dimly-lit warehouse, where one mug warns another, “Watch ye — The Licensee is after ye.”) Evidently the enforcer was named after “Kevin the Gerbil” on a kids TV puppet show — so imagine a member of the New York Mafia known as Tony “Mr Snuffleupagus” Valenti, for instance.
Today’s update notes that the killers — the alleged killers, of course — sped out of the parking lot in a VW Golf.
But the entire scenario reminds me of a plot line from a brilliant television series set in Baltimore (the other city Margaret and I call home, for now). That set me to thinking: Port city. Rivalry among crime families. Challenging dialect. Wouldn’t there be a market for a series that takes up the issues of inner-city racketeering set in Glasgow?
(Parenthetical disclaimer in case any Glaswegian mobsters read this blog: I mean no disrespect, and certainly no hostility, apart from the general antipathy a law-abiding pacifist citizen holds toward violent law-breaking. In other words, “Nothing personal, sirs.”)
So have you come across the TV series Taggart yet?
Oh, Rob, I remember seeing early episodes of Taggart long ago in the States, and I’ve caught one or two over here. I haven’t figured out the broadcast schedule here, though, and I tend not to bother investigating. I’ll look into tracking some Taggarts down, though.
Perhaps you readers won’t know that, in Britain, “The Licensee” means something like “The Liquor Store Owner.”