Synopsis
London. The Swinging Sixties.
Welcome to our manor 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.
Biography
Jake
Arnott was born in Buckinghamshire in 1961. He left school at sixteen.
He has since worked as a labourer, a mortuary technician, a theatrical
agent's assistant, an artist's life model, an actor and a sign language
interpreter as well as enjoying many fruitful periods of unemployment.
During the eighties he lived in various squats in London, one of which
was burned down in 1987, leaving him temporarily homeless, possessionless
and under arrest on suspicion of arson (charges were never pressed). In
1989 he moved to Leeds to work for Red Ladder, the radical theatre company.
After a national tour with them he abandoned his rather meagre acting
career and began to write, supporting himself on a part time job with
Leeds Social Services as a resource centre worker.
Other acting experience has included work on the Fringe in London, Edinburgh
and Toronto as well as improvised comedy where he worked with Sceptre
stable mate Stella Duffy. His last acting job was at Shepperton Studios,
appearing as a mummy in Universal Pictures' blockbuster The Mummy - though
you won't recognise him through the bandages.
Jake Arnott now lives in London. Truecrime is his third novel following
the success of The Long Firm and He Kills Coppers. The Long Firm has been
made into a four-part series by the BBC starring Mark Strong, Derek Jacobi
and Phil Daniels which will be transmitted in July.
Contributors Testimonials
Harry
Starks describes himself as a businessman, others might call him a gangster
or a recidivist; nobody calls him a poof ë not to his face anyway. As
Harry says, ‰Someone once called Ronnie Kray a fat poof. Ronnie took the
top of his head off with a Luger. That's my kind of gay liberation.' Arnott
perfectly captures late 1960s London, a great place if you're in the crime
business, until the establishment decides that the likes of Harry are
beginning to take the piss. Arnott charts the changing drug and music
scene, the flesh merchants, bent coppers and the agro business. Harry
is at the centre of the book, but we never meet him directly instead he's
revealed via the perfectly realised voices and impressions of five separate
narrators. Witty, intelligent, irreverent and entertaining, The Long Firm
is a modern classic. The final chapter contains a critique of deviancy
theory that should warm the heart of anyone who's ever felt they don't
fit in.
Louise Welsh.