- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Soho Press; Reprint edition (July 1 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1569472327
- ISBN-13: 978-1569472323
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 14.7 x 2.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 481 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,127,050 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
"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 in the early 1960s. Five very different characters tell their five very different stories about "Torture Gang Boss" Harry Starks, a man who likes to keep both Bertrand Russell and Physique Pictorial on his coffee table. His lover and kept boy, Terry, recalls him as a man who "liked to break people" but also a "frightened little child," while according to the Tory lord who frequented his erotic functions, Starks is "lower-class tearaway." In the eyes of his various criminal and starlet peers, Mad Harry is a depressive with a diabolical mind, one who likes to "stage manage the fear." The radical young sociologist who teaches him in prison marks him down as a product of working-class subculture, a living critique of capitalism. When, however, he asks Harry what he makes of Gay Liberation, he doesn't quite get the expected response:
"Well," he said with a gleam in his eye. "Someone once called Ronnie Kray a fat poof. Ronnie took the top of his head off with a Luger. That's my sort of Gay Liberation. Though, to be honest, I think it was the fat part what got to him. Ron's, well, touchy about his weight."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 the corruption, of that life drive this story, but Arnott manages to weave cliché into enigma, myth into inquiry, thereby revitalizing our well-worn images of the mad, bad, and dangerous to know. As Starks would put it, keeping Brecht's question before the readers' eyes, "It's all about the economy of power." --Vicky Lebeau --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
British actor Arnott debuts with an extraordinarily rich thriller, a character study based on gangster life in 1960s London. Raw and often disturbingly detailed, the story is a piercing examination of the life of Harry Starks, an unforgettable villain who controls the rackets in the West End through menace, brutality and his own particular brand of tough love. Each of the book's five sections explores a different character's often harrowing episodes with Starks. Terry, a club-hopping pretty boy, is kept as a lover, slave and assistant by Starks, but when Terry gets uppity, Starks strikes. Teddy Thursby is a drunken, financially ruined member of the House of Commons whose homosexuality becomes a chip in one of Starks's high-stakes blackmail schemes. Jack the Hat is a pill-popping thug used by Starks for the dirtiest of jobs, while another employee, fading starlet Ruby Ryder, is kept in charge of Starks's pornography ring. Lenny, a university sociologist who befriends Starks, winds up in a gangster shootout, as murderously hot-blooded as his kingpin pal. Readers familiar with the saga of the Kray brothers will recognize the milieu. Some brief scenes of torture and wanton violence require a strong stomach, and yet there are many tender moments that show Starks's humaneness and vulnerability. A leader loyal to his friends and a softie for a pretty face, he's nonetheless an iron-willed disciplinarian when he's been betrayed. He's also a man of considerable intellectual depth who can discuss complex philosophy with clarity and simplicity. Starks's many associates are as original and fully developed as he is. They all populate a story of remarkable originality that stretches far beyond the conventional crime drama in both style and substance. Agent, Gelfman-Schneider. 25,000 first printing. (Sept.) FYI: The Long Firm will be a five-part BBC miniseries.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Pleasant Diversion for a Couple of Days,
By
This review is from: The Long Firm (Paperback)
Arnott's book is basically a quick-read, light novel, but it uses some interesting devices from more "serious" literature to make an engaging little book. The book focuses on Harry, a gangster in 60s London, but it does it by portraying him solely through the eyes of others. The book has five sections, each of which is written from within the perspective of each of 5 characters who relate to Harry in markedly different ways. Some characters are handled more effectively than others, but overall it is competently done. The gay sex scenes are described with more enthusiasm than the straight, and the last section in which the relevant character is a professor becomes somewhat didactic, but otherwise it is fairly well-balanced. I enjoyed reading it, and would have been happy for it to continue.
5.0 out of 5 stars
4 hours, 5 coffees, and 9 cigarettes,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Long Firm (Paperback)
I couldn't put it down. The characters and locations seemed very real (They should, many were real.). Jack The Hat's chapter was the most engaging, but each narrator gave a different, and interesting view of Harry.I disagree with the reviewer who didn't find redeeming qualities in Harry. Perhaps I've fallen for the same mythic appeal of the outlaw as the characters in the book, but I found Harry to be quite likeable. (I'd also like to say that the author's understanding of mod/skinhead culture was surprisingly accurate. This element doesn't take up much of the book, but is frequently misrepresented in fiction, so it seems noteworthy when someone gets it right. The author obviously took great pains to make his characters as genuine as possible.)
5.0 out of 5 stars
Original Slant,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Long Firm (Paperback)
I thoroughly enjoyed the original slant Arnott put on this book. While dealing with the same character throughout the book, he manages to use different views to keep the story fresh and the reader uneasy. It is truly a page turner that exceeds the reader's expectations.
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