- Published
- March 5th 2009
- Price
- £7.99
- Extent
- 288 pages
- Format
- B-Format Paperback
- ISBN
- 978 0 9556476 2
Prizes
- SHORTLISTED FOR THE COMMONWEALTH WRITERS’ PRIZE 2010
- LONG-LISTED FOR THE 2010 AUTHORS’ CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD
- OCTOBER WINNER OF THE PEOPLE’S BOOK PRIZE 2010
Among Thieves by Mez Packer
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It’s 1983 and two ex-campus drug dealers are locked in a feud of mysterious origin. Chilly Pads has the upper hand and the money, while Andy has the charisma and the girls. But when Andy sets up a disastrous deal with IRA gangsters, he’s paid in fake dollars – and, much to Pads’ delight, needs his help financing a scam to recoup his money.
Coventry 1983. As the city skanks to the 2 Tone beat, so another multicultural youth enterprise gets under way, uniting wildly divergent characters looking to smash the system and get rich quick on the music’s narcotic spur: hashish . . . Comical, sometimes profound, this is a highly original debut
— Guardian
Mez Packer has triumphantly pulled off the trick of writing across the gender divide—each of her male characters is complex and convincing . . . The energy of the writing and the darkness of the story are reminiscent of Martin Amis—but better plotted
— Independent on Sunday
Packer lovingly evokes Coventry in the 1980s, a city on the point of disintegration. She has a gift for quirky conversational description and social satire – a promising new novelist
— Times Literary Supplement
Rattles along wonderfully. Packer writes crisply about a world she clearly knows. Like any good thriller, it’s all about voyage, not destination. This one’s worth travelling on
— The Word
Engaging and very innovative
— Howard Marks
The headlong narrative of Among Thieves brilliantly evokes the drug-fuelled 2 Tone madness of 1980s Coventry
— Graham Joyce