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Product Description
Finely crafted.... Raine could easily join the rank of John Harvey and Michael Dibden.""--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review). ""A quietly jolting first novel.... Offers an unsparing look at some sullen hoods and their dead-end lives in an economically depressed London suburb.""--Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review. ""A haunting story...gritty, gray, suffocating reality.""--Booklist
Amazon.com Review
Readers accustomed to the British country-house variety of murder mystery, go no further; Smalltime, a disturbing first novel by Jerry Raine, has none of the coziness of the dotty spinster detectives or decorous murder-by-poisoned-crumpets that are long associated with British crime stories. The world according to Raine is a universe of mean streets and petty crooks for whom violence comes as naturally as breathing.
Raine's main character is Chris, a guy with a record who lives at the Y and works in a liquor store. All too soon, his path intersects with that of Dashy, a mugger who injures him and Kevin, a thug who provokes him to violence. No doubt Miss Marple would be shocked, but fans of a more hard-boiled school of crime fiction will find Smalltime both well crafted and memorable.
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