Vinnie got Blown Away

Nicky Burkett finds his childhood friend Vinnie dead at the bottom of a tower block, feet sawn off. He and his mates have a code of conduct which makes revenge inevitable. They have to find the villains - much more serious criminals than themselves - and they have to take them on. The first entry in Jeremy Cameron's Nicky Burkett series, originally published in 1995, fuses crime noir, revenge thriller and comic caper with a rare level of social commentary, vividly transporting the reader to the mean streets of North East London. Vinnie Got Blown Away marks a turning point in British crime writing. Funny and violent, it turns away from the traditional murder mystery among the middle classes. It revolves instead around the dispossessed, the petty criminals, the local boys. It mixes without discrimination among black, white and Asian communities, following their speech patterns - cockney and Caribbean unite - and demonstrates their resilience and ability to survive all outside pressures and values. Featuring a cast of characters from bent coppers and exasperated parole officers to every conceivable variety of gangster, hoodlum, wide boy and pusher, the novel races to a bloodthirsty climax that reads like an unholy hybrid of Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino, with Chandleresque dialogue that sizzles off the page. As fresh and funny as it was on its initial release, Vinnie Got Blown Away a defining novel of the London crime noir canon, and a treat for crime lovers seeking authenticity as well as thrills.