The Long Firm - Tapa blanda

Gripping ... slumming it doesn t get much better than this - Time Out I simply could put it down, couldn't stop until I'd finished it. It tooke me right back to the times and brought back the fear - the real cold fear - of the period - Terry O'Neill, 60s photographer Jake Arnott has created a gangster story every bit as cool, stylish and venomous as the London in which it is set, an English original as sharp and lethal as a Savile Row lapel - Independent on Sunday Arnott's creation of the decadent, dangerous atmosphere of the times is immaculate. His prose is as smooth as a seersucker suit, as sweet as a purple heart. Suck it and see - Observer As polished as a brass knuckleduster...strong-arm stuff, which zings with an authentic low-life argot and grips the reader with its head-in-a-vice portrait of the ugly glamour of the era - Sunday Times So stylish and readeable - Independent on Sunday a solid historical novel, boasting impressive research, vivid detail and that mysterious ability to grasp the Zeitgeist - Telegraph The evocation of Sixties London is brilliantly done and the powerful, stylish writing hooks the reader from the first page. One of the most impressive first novels I've read in years - Mail on Sunday

London. The 1960s. The capital is swinging, but underneath the boomtown there's a dark underbelly. Meet Harry Starks: club owner, racketeer, porn king, sociology graduate and keen Judy Garland fan. Harry's business is fronting violence with rough charm and cheap glamour; putting the frighteners on, performing menace while trying to desperately trying to jump the counter into legitimacy. Five characters tell five tales that combine in an extraordinary narrative that is both an explosively paced thriller and brilliantly imagined sociological and topographical portrait of sixties London.