Spencer's riveting slice of London crime life, reminiscent of Trainspotting and Pulp Fiction, pulsates with a pervasive nastiness even if it never quite coheres. Darren Friend is a minor-league criminal with a privileged girlfriend and a dubious business interest in replacement windows who likes hitting people and making easy money. A woman client slow to pay her window bill is beaten into a coma. Her husband, a higher class of criminal, and his business partner, Reggie, whose sexual preference is near-death orgasms, can both help Darren reach the big time with a scheme to severely reduce the value of prime London real estate with random acts of vandalism and arson. The non-linear narrative is littered with acts of death and destruction, peppered with rock music trivia (the author is a professional musician) and features a sprawling cast of low-grade hoodlums who all copulate at a frenzied pace and are mostly indistinguishable from one another. Emphasizing form over substance, this flawed novel delivers a fast, frenzied jolt of pure yobbish energy from start to finish.""--Publishers Weekly

Tooth and nail

Spencer, John B

The Do-Not Press

Do Not Pr

London, Chester Springs, PA, 1998. (A5-98/99)

London, Chester Springs, PA, England, 1998

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

Obscured text on front cover due to sticker attached.
Some text are skewed

Distributor statement from label on t.p.

When it comes to property, Reggie Crystal and Terry Reece-Morgan have half of West London carved up between them. But both men have problems: Reggie's is that he likes to swing by the neck from light fittings, while Terry has a wife in intensive care and can't wait to pull the plug. Darren Friend, self-made psychopath and social-climber, is desperate to go play with the big boys, but he has too many friends in low places and a high-class 'clean teamer' girlfriend who needs satisfying. Materially... as well as physically. All are set on a collision course from which nobody looks likely to walk away.

Between them, Reggie Crystal and Terry Reece-Morgan own half of West London, but social-climbing Darren Friend would like a piece of the pie. The three are "set on a collision course from which nobody looks likely to walk away."--Back cover

A British novel about a gang of crooks who specialize in lowering property values in London by staging violent incidents and setting fires. Their private life too is filled with violence, as the men enjoy beating their women

183 p. ; 22 cm
Distributor statement from label on t.p

2023-06-28