A successful Coventry businessman’s criminal past explored by his son in new book
The son of a notorious Coventry criminal has written a book about coming to terms with his father’s past and the effect it has had on him.
Jason Wilson is the son of Tony Spencer, who was sentenced in 2010 to five years and three months in prison for conspiring to import cannabis and amphetamines into the country from the Netherlands. He ended up on the front page of the Coventry Telegraph.
The book examines how his father, a well-known and successful businessman in the city, ended up becoming a criminal.
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And this coming week, you can get a taste of the story, as CoventryLive will release three serializations of the book.
Mr Wilson said: “Why and how my father became the high profile criminal he did has always baffled me.
“To meet him was to discover a charming, articulate and intelligent man, handsome but without vanity.
“That he could be a violent man was unimaginable. That he had spent years in prison seemed untrue – that he was one of the most dangerous men in our town made no sense, and how could that? He is ?
“I was twelve years old when I began to find out who my father was, and over the decades that followed, I yearned to know the answers that resolved his contradictions.
“”The Old Man and I” recounts my search for answers, from a young boy visiting his father in prison, to a young man smuggling hashish with him to Spain, to sitting by his side in a shelter of Amsterdam, praying for his recovery from gunshot wounds, fearing he was on his deathbed.
“This search would become a decades-long journey, testing my faith, challenging my loyalty, evolving into the task of unraveling the old man’s past so that I could finally understand who he was and, in turn, who I might be.”
The Old Man And Me, published by Mirror Books for £8.99, goes on sale March 3.
Author Jason will be signing copies on Saturday March 5 at Kenilworth Books from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Waterstones Coventry from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
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