Chopper 2. [antikvár]

MARK Brandon 'Chopper' Read was secretly released from Pentridge Prison on November 14,1991, after serving nearly five years for shooting a drug dealer, criminal damage and arson. Behind him was a total of more than 17 years in prison and a ghastly reputation for violence earned in a blood-spattered career as a streetfighter, standover man, gunman and underworld executioner. Ahead of him was an uncertain future. Read is the son of a strict Seventh Day Adventist woman and a war-stressed former soldier who slept with a loaded gun at his side. His childhood was brutal, institutionalised and dislocated. As an infant he was placed in a babies home for many months before returning to his parents, who were later to separate. Bullied and ridiculed at school because he was a slow learner and because of his mother's unusual religious convictions, the young Read responded first by impressing his peers with his tolerance of pain - and then with his willingness to inflict it on others. 'There are none so merciless as those who have been