Chopper puts hard word on authors ONE of the most unusual partnerships in Australian publishing history has ended in acrimony and litigation. Crime writers John Silvester and Andrew Rule turned standover man and career criminal Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read into a household name through the publication of 11 true-crime titles that helped establish the genre in Australia. Now Read is accusing Silvester and Rule of failing to declare more than pound stg. 81,000 ($138,000) of sales of the Chopper books in Britain.