The Long Firm

than Englishness itself' Arena 'Arnott brilliantly captures the gaudy, glamorous, seedy and sordid side of the 60s underworld and show business society. A must-read' Elle An extraordinarily rich thriller ... raw and often disturbingly detailed ... a story of remarkable originality that stretches far beyond the conventional crime drama in both style and substance. -- Publishers Weekly Arnott pulls off the amazing feat of making a sadistic 1960s London mob boss fascinating. -- Richard Lipez, Washington Post Book World Few [homosexual hipster gangsters] have been drawn with as much intellectual savvy and complexity as Jake Arnott's Harry Starks, whose volatile persona fuels The Long Firm with an incendiary tension ... Like Francis Coppola's Godfather trilogy, Arnott invites us to explore the possibility that the allure of the so-called criminal deviance of the homosexual mobster stems not from the notion of the "outsider," but from the more unnerving possibility that the mobster's world is but a microcosm of our own larger society - the "norm," as we like to call it ... Full of gallows humor, careening misadventures and the sharp argot of the perennial wise guy, The Long Firm is fiercely seductive, just the ticket for another trip into our guilty pleasures. -- Scott Vickers, Bloomsbury Review Astonishing. -- Guardian ingeniously constructed ... bitterly ironic ... an extravagantly energized narrative leavened by occasional outcroppings of grim humor ... a terrific debut. -- Kirkus Reviews Strikingly original ... What makes The Long Firm so satisfying is Arnott's eas in seasoning his fiction with real-life events and people, especially the Krays ... the bloodlettign never feels gratuitous: It's truthful to the era and characters. Besides, Arnott doesn't need to rely on cheap shock tactics. A brazenly confident writer, Arnott perfectly nails 1960s England in all its contradictions. You can practically hear Judy Garland singing an encore of "Over the Rainbow" at teh London Palladium, and smell the gunpowder from Ronnie Kray's pistol after he capped George Cornell in the Blind Beggar pub. -- Renee Graham, Boston Globe So richly evocative of seamy, swinging London in the 60s that it makes one ache for the bad old days. Harry Starks [is] an anti-hero to die for ... fast, funny and frenetic. -- Ann Prichard, USA Today Deliciously seedy ... A storming good read, and Arnott's evocation of gangland London, with its restless violence and patina of glamour, is flawless. -- Bethany Schneider, OUT This season's hottest new writer ... witty and engaging. -- Michael Giltz, The Advocate A great read from start to finish, gathering pace and depth as it goes. And that's in the face of the challenging construction Arnott sets himself, involving five first-person narrators who are drawn into the Starks orbit at different stages in his career. Picking up the story, each of them must win us around all over again - and resoundingly do so ... A 60s gangster novel with a compellnig plot, pignant characters and plenty of wit. -- Henry Shukman, New York Times Book Review