March 5th 2009
£7.99
288 pages
B-Format Paperback
ISBN
978 0 9556476 2

Prizes

  • SHORTLISTED FOR THE COMMONWEALTH WRITERSPRIZE 2010
  • LONG-LISTED FOR THE 2010 AUTHORSCLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD
  • OCTOBER WINNER OF THE PEOPLE’S BOOK PRIZE 2010

Among Thieves by Mez Packer

Buy Now Price £7.99

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

Add Your Comment