The Great Train Robbery and the Metropolitan Police Flying Squad

Book excerpt: The Squad that investigated The Great Train Robbery. "The Old Grey Fox" or "One Day Tommy" (Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Butler) selected six of the best officers on the elite Metropolitan Police Flying Squad to investigate the Crime of the Century, but whilst many books have been written by and about every criminal arrested for this crime, NONE have been written about the detectives who traced and tracked them. Tommy Butler delayed his retirement to complete the job, but died a few months after he retired at 57 years of age, the only detective of his rank in the late 1950s and 1960s not to publish an autobiography.??This book provides a detailed account of the men tasked with tracking down the most notorious thieves in British history. It examines the investigation in detail and asks how it would contrast with the methods used today should a similar incident take place.??Geoff Platt examines what happened to these men after the investigation was closed and the effect it had on both their personal and professional lives.