The Long Firm [Paperback]

"What's breaking into a bank compared with founding one?" Bertolt Brecht's provocative question opens Jake Arnott's first novel The Long Firm and sets the scene for its memorable exploration of the London underworld at the beginning of the 1960s. Five very different characters tell their five very different stories about "Torture Gang Boss" Harry Starks. A man who "liked to break people" but also a "frightened little child" is how his lover and kept boy Terry recalls him; a "lower-class tearaway", according to the Tory lord who frequents his erotic parties; a depressive with a diabolical mind, one who likes to "stage manage the fear", in the eyes of his various criminal and starlet peers; a product of working-class subculture and a living critique of capitalism, concludes the radical young sociologist who teaches him in prison. Harry Starks is the beginning and end of The Long Firm, a compelling showman who embodies the brutal realism and impossible dreams at the heart of Arnott's vision of London low life. The glamour and corruption of that life drive this story but Arnott manages to weave cliche into enigma, myth into inquiry, in a way that revitalises the well-worn images of the mad and the bad. As Starks would put it, keeping Brecht's question before the readers' eyes, "It's all about the economy of power, Lenny". --Vicky Lebeau --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'Truly fascinating ... Arnott's ability to powerfully resurrect an era is astonishing' (Jimmy Boyle, Guardian )

'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' (Independent on Sunday )

'Compulsive reading, powerful writing with an evocative feel for the bleaker side of the Swinging Sixties' (The Times )

'Gripping ... slumming it doesn't get much better than this' (Time Out )

'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' (Independent on Sunday )

'Pulp Fiction so polished as to be immaculate' (New Statesman )

'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 )

'Compulsive reading, powerful writing with an evocative feel for the bleaker side of the Swinging Sixties'

'Truly fascinating ... Arnott's ability to powerfully resurrect an era is astonishing'

'Pulp Fiction so polished as to be immaculate'

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.

London. The 1960s.
A blistering novel of the "swinging sixties" that does for London what James Ellroy does for LA. 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 narratives chart Harry's rise, fall, and eventual escape. Each one interlocks into an epic testimony where high life meets low life and real and imaginary characters spar with each other as the seedy end of the swinging sixties is revealed in ruthless verisimilitude.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Jake Arnott was born in Buckinghamshire in 1961. He has worked as a labourer, a mortuary technician, a theatrical agent's assistant, an artist's life model and a sign language interpreter as well as enjoying many fruitful periods of unemployment. His acting experience has included work on the Fringe in London, Edinburgh and Toronto as well as improvised comedy. He is the author of two other novels, HE KILLS COPPERS and TRUECRIME.