Behind Bars: True Crime Stories of Whiskey Heists, Beer Bandits, and Fake Million-Dollar Wines

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.

Mike Gerrard is an award-winning travel and drinks writer who has written for National Geographic, The Times of London, American Express, Google, Microsoft, BBC Good Food, Waitrose Drinks, The Huffington Post, and BBC Travel. He has written over 40 travel guidebooks, including the best-selling National Geographic Traveler Guide to Greece, as well as a collection of travel writing, Snakes Alive (Blue Sky Books, 2010). He also publishes the Travel Distilled website (traveldistilled.com), which combines his two passions.

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.

His first drinks book is Cask Strength: The Story of the Barrel, the Secret Ingredient in Your Drink (Ben Bella, July 2023).