HITMEN FOR HIRE, exposing South Africa's underworld

267pp., paperback, Johannesburg, 2017

Mark Shaw draws on his research into over a thousand incidents of hired assassinations from 2006 to 2016 to reveal how these murders are used to exert a mafia-style control over the country's legal and illegal economic activity.

"Mark Shaw takes a subject usually confined to the pages of pulp fiction and turns it into the stuff of serious analysis on the place that assassinations occupy in South Africa's political, economic and social life." Jonny Steinberg, author of "A Man of Good Hope"

"This is an extraordinary, enthralling read. With his unique insight, Mark Shaw has thrown a spotlight onto the underworld, exposing the commercialisation of murder in South Africa. I have interviewed a fair number of hitmen as a journalist, but this book still shocked me from cover to cover." Mandy Wiener, author of "Killing Kebble: an underworld exposed"

Mark Shaw is Director of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime and Senior Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science's International Drug Policy Project. He was until recently National Research Foundation Professor of Justice and Security at the Centre of Criminology, University of Cape Town, where he is now an adjunct professor.