The Long Firm
On sale
26th May 2011
Price: £8.99
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.
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Reviews
Truly fascinating ... Arnott's ability to powerfully resurrect an era is astonishing
One of the smartest, funniest and original novels you will read all year ... Arnott is quite brilliant at excavating the cultural minutiae of the time to bring the period vividly to life
Compulsive reading, powerful writing with an evocative feel for the bleaker side of the Swinging Sixties
Gripping ... slumming it doesn't get much better than this
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 Saville Row lapel
Pulp Fiction so polished as to be immaculate
The powerful, stylish writing hooks the reader from the first page. One of the most impressive first novels I've read in years.