truecrime: a novel - Hardcover

Arnott, Jake

3.53

446 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1569473730 ISBN 13: 9781569473733

Publisher: Soho Press, 2004

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Praise for truecrime:

“Funny, fast, witty, brutal. . . . Whenever he’s got a new book out I drop everything, knowing that the next couple of hours are going to be pure gangland bliss.”—David Bowie

Praise for Jake Arnott

“A great read.”—The New York Times Book Review

“An incendiary tension . . . fiercely seductive.”—Bloomsbury Review

“An anti-hero to die for.”—USA Today

“Strikingly original . . . hypnotically entertaining”—The Boston Globe

“Brilliant.”—The Washington Post

“Gripping.”—Seattle Times

“Sentences fired like bullets at the reader’s imagination.”—Los Angeles Times

Gangland London hasn’t been the same since Harry Starks absconded. The old gang isn’t quite what it used to be with the boss gone. Most are dead, imprisoned or serving time on barstools. Harry’s rumored to be laying low on Cyprus, the Law having given up on nabbing him. But someone is looking who doesn’t worry about extradition laws or the rights of the incarcerated. Someone with about as much use for the rules as Harry.

The predecessor to truecrime was Jake Arnott’s The Long Firm, which is being prepared for broadcast as a four-part series by the BBC. Together with He Kills Coppers, they constitute a small tell-all masterpiece revealing of the British underworld, populated by celebrity criminals, members of high society and the peerage, henchman and louche entertainers.

Jake Arnott is the author of the British bestsellers He Kills Coppers and The Long Firm, both available from Soho Press. He lives in London.

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About the Author:

Jake Arnott has been all the mandatory things required to qualify for authorship. He has been a laborer, mortuary technician, theatrical agent's assistant, artist's model, actor, sign language interpreter, and brain surgeon. He is the author of the British bestsellers He Kills Coppers and The Long Firm, both available from Soho Press. He lives in London, England.

From Publishers Weekly:

Talk about antiheroes: the three narrators of this novel of London's gritty underworld are set on murder, revenge and larceny. Tony Meehan is a washed-up crime journalist currently ghosting the memoir of Eddie Doyle, "[j]ewel thief, bank robber, known associate of most of the major gangland faces," who's just out of prison after serving time for his role in a heist of �15 million in gold, most of which was never recovered. Julie McClusky, the daughter of a murdered gangster, has become a middle-class actress—but she's also searching for her father's killer under the guise of working on her boyfriend's movie about London criminals. Shady businessman Gary "Gaz" Kelly has always modeled himself on "[v]illains and gangsters. The Kray Twins. Harry Starks. Flash bastards. Legends." Unlike the Kray Twins, Harry Starks is Abbott's creation (last seen in 2001's Long Firm); he's the supposed mastermind of the bullion theft, the possible key to the whereabouts of the gold and Julia's number one suspect. When Starks is spotted at Ronnie Kray's funeral, the search for him begins in earnest, and that search, as well as the crimes uncovered in its wake and committed during its progress, dominate the rest of the book. Arnott's plotting is intricate and his prose hard-edged, made more so by his atmospheric use of Cockney and slang and his close-up look at frightening but human villains.
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