Jake Arnott

Page Updated: 18/03/02

Jake Arnott

He Kills Coppers

pbk 21 Feb 02

The Long Firm

Audio Titles

18/03/02

and

Books By Jake Arnott

About the Author (Photo by Michael Wildsmith)

Bibliography

First British Edition Sceptre (2001)

Paperback - Sceptre (2002)

He Kills Coppers
Billy Porter is our friend…
August 1966 – the long hot summer of World Cup euphoria is abruptly shattered when three policemen are gunned down in a West London street. A bewilderingly senseless crime that shocks a nation seemingly at ease with itself and brings an end to the victory celebrations. Yet it also marks a beginning for three men, whose fates are irrevocably bound up with the event and its consequences, which come to a head thirty years on:
Is our friend, is our friend…
Frank Taylor - an ambitious detective struggling with the conflicts between career and conscience as he is drawn into intrigues of corruption.
Tony Meehan - a gutter press journalist with a nose for a nasty story, using scandal and expose as a cover for his own dark secrets.
Billy Porter - a disaffected petty thief, haunted by a violent past, pushed over the edge to commit the ultimate crime, eulogised by the terrace chant:
Billy Porter is our friend, He Kills Coppers
From the heady Sixties to the Thacherite Eighties, He Kills Coppers spans three decades of profound social change as it looks at morality and corruption on both sides of the law and at the very heart of the state.
‘Easily as good as, if not better than, the superb Long Firm. Arnott returns to the world of 1960s gangsters, except this time it’s the cops as well as the robbers who take centre stage. The novel is a stylish tour-de-force, Arnott’s taut lucid prose moving the reader effortlessly from the 1966 World Cup to the 1980s and the age of Thatcher’s Boot Boys and the Battle of the Beanfield. Smashing.’ Julia Bell, Big Issue
‘A wonderful mix of period detail and atmosphere, this is a fine, evocative novel’ Stuart Price, Independent
‘Many thought that Jake Arnott’s debut, The Long Firm, was good but not quite as good as the hype tried to convince us it was. Frankly, Hemingway, Hammett and Greene together would have been hard pressed to come up with anything that good. His eagerly awaited follow-up, He Kills Coppers, has arrived - and it’s better . . . a fine piece of work that can only increase Arnott’s reputation further.’ Jim Driver, Time Out
‘Arnott’s tough and streetwise novel packs a powerful punch’ Simon Shaw, Mail On Sunday
‘Incendiary stuff’ Neil O’Sullivan, GQ
‘The story and its characters ride perfectly within the setting, to the benefit of both . . . You don’t have to be a crime fan to enjoy Arnott’s books, you just have to be interested in the lives of ordinary, fallible people.’ Christopher Fowler, Independent On Sunday
‘Told from the point of view of each of the three central characters . . . they embody a dark and unhappy Englishness. Although we know these lives will all intersect at some point, it’s a tribute to Arnott’s mastery of plot that the twist is wholly unexpected.’ Sukhdev Sandhu, Daily Telegraph
`The power of He Kills Coppers lies not just in the simplicity with which individual scenes are written, but in the simplicity of the narrative design. The subject matter is ambitious. In the margins of a fast-moving crime story, Arnott questions the policing of modern Britain and what went wrong. But there is no sociological theorising to weigh the story down. All that matters is what happens next . . . Set mainly in 1966, the summer when England won the World Cup, He Kills Coppers impressively evokes both the innocence and the precariousness of that time . . . Arnott is a writer of many shades and, as in his debut, The Long Firm, shows his penchant for combining challenging storylines with strong storytelling.’ Max Davidson, Sunday Telegraph
`Gritty and absorbing.’ Mirror
Much more than a gripping adventure, it’s a faultless chronicle of hanging mores and, as a study in crime and punishment, it superbly plays the sins of Porter against the dubious morality of his pursuers. Touching, darkly humorous, essential reading.’ Ally Fogg, Big Issue in the North
`Arnott, author of the outstanding The Long Firm, once again creates a razor-sharp tale of 60s Soho.’ Maxim
`Compulsively readable . . . Arnott has a sharp eye for the depiction of social worlds. His forays into a variety of subcultures - of carnival people, peace protesters and left-wing squatters of the Margaret Thatcher years - also reveal his ability to capture transitions in the British zeitgeist with often acerbic clarity . . . with its cracking pace, eye for detail and willingness to stretch the boundaries of crime fiction, it’s excellent summer holiday reading that will make you hungry for more.’ Ed Wright, South China Morning Post
`A menacingly slick story of a mid-Sixties shooting that shocks an England celebrating its World Cup victory, and spills across time, in the process re-routing the lives of three very different young men along one fateful path.’ Neil O‘Sullivan, GQ

Paperback - Sceptre (2000)

First British Edition Sceptre (1999)

The Long Firm
London. The 1960s. The capital is swinging, but beneath the boomtown there’s a dark underbelly.
Meet Harry Starks: club owner, racketeer, porn king, sociology graduate and keen Judy Garland fan. There is a business like showbusiness - it’s what Harry does. Fronting violence with rough charm and cheap glamour; performing menace while trying to jump the counter into legitimacy. In The Long Firm five characters spectacularly chart Harry’s rise and fall -
Terry: Harry’s kept boy finds himself caught up in a long firm and learns first hand about Harry’s persuasive methods...
Lord Thursby: a closeted Tory recently kicked upstairs and in a spot of financial bother. Legitimising Harry’s business brings him cash - and boys – but ultimately leads him to a farcical heart of darkness...
Jack the Hat: a doomed gangster teams up with Harry for the Thiefrow Airport racket as he hurtles on a speed-fuelled journey to his own fate...
Ruby Ryder: down on her luck, this fading starlet gets involved in Harry’s dealings with the ‘dirty squad’. But as his porn empire crumbles she finds herself in a deadly ménage à trois...
Lenny: a hip young lecturer and radical criminologist. When his star pupil goes on the run, Gangster expounds theory and Criminologist turns criminal in an explosive dénouement on the Costa Del Crime...
Each tale interlocks in an epic testimony where high life meets low life and real and imaginary characters spar with each other as the seedy end of the Swinging Sixties is revealed in ruthless verisimilitude.
`Jake Arnott has created a gangster story every bit as cool, stylish and venomous as the London in which it is set, an English original as sharp and lethal as a Savile Row lapel’ Independent on Sunday
`The Long Firm is more than an addition to the genre: it is both knowing, in a literary sense, and entertaining, and makes profitable use of its influences. Gracefully written, diligently and rewardingly researched, it is both exciting and funny. It takes the clichés of the genre and makes them sexy and freshly interesting’ Observer
`Done so cannily that it virtually winks at you’ The Sunday Times
`Fantastic! I absolutely couldn't put it down. It took me right back to the real cold fear of the times. I was there. The Long Firm tells it exactly as it was… Arnott brilliantly captures the gaudy, glamorous, seedy and sordid side of the 60s underworld and show business society. A must-read . . . makes Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels seem like Listen with Mother’ Terry O’Neill, Elle
`Arnott’s characterisation is so strong and his grasp of the subject matter so sure and thoroughly researched that anyone old enough to have lived this period will find himself reliving it . . . What you see is not pleasant, but it does tell us a lot about ourselves. The great contradiction in The Long Firm is that it makes the reader believe that they are reading fact when actually it is fiction: this is what makes the book so gripping’ Guardian
‘Stark’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’ Publishers Weekly
`Arnott’s epic debut manages to weld the hip prose of James Ellroy to the dives of our capital . . . to hark back to the Sixties, to a time when fashionable chicsters rubbed shoulders with East End gangsters . . . to remind us that there is nothing more murderous than Englishness itself’ Arena
`The prose swaggers with the patois of its era lending an authenticity to its voice. And while Arnott has done his research, he has the imaginative stamina to interlink his various talking heads into a denouement that forces us to review all their testimonies anew’ Express on Sunday
`In the same gritty tradition as Get Carter and The Long Good Friday comes Arnott’s impressive and unusual debut, set on the mean streets of London . . . A fresh twist on the familiar gangland tale and a name to watch out for in the future’ Mirror
`Sharp, sexy, seedy and stylish` Evening Herald (Ireland)
`An extraordinarily vivid social history. The voices are so distinct and the stories so engrossing that you never have time to stop and realise just how good the writing is’ Hampstead and Highgate Express

About The Author
Jake Arnott was born in 1961, and lives in London. His first novel, The Long Firm, was published in 1999 to huge public and critical acclaim and is now being made into a television series by the BBC.

Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

He Kills Coppers (Sceptre, 2001) Sceptre Pbk Feb 02

The Long Firm (Sceptre, 1999) Sceptre Pbk Feb 00