The Doll Princess

Benn, Tom

ISBN 10: 1444816381 / ISBN 13: 9781444816389

Published by Ulverscroft Ltd, 2013

Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. A copy that has been read but remains in clean condition. All of the pages are intact and the cover is intact and the spine may show signs of wear. The book may have minor markings which are not specifically mentioned. Ex library copy with usual stamps & stickers. Seller Inventory # wbs9954829768

Synopsis:

The arrival of an assured and exhilarating new voice in literary crime fiction.

It's Manchester, July 1996, the month after the IRA bomb, and the Evening News is carrying reports of two murders. On the front page there's a photograph of a glamorous Egyptian woman, a socialite and heiress to an oil fortune, whose partially clothed body has been found in the basement of a block of flats. It would appear that she has been the subject of a sexual attack. In the back pages of the same paper there is a fifty-word piece on the murder of a young prostitute whose body has been found dumped on a roadside near the McVitie's Factory.

For Bane - fixer, loanshark and legman for one of Manchester's established ganglords - it's the second piece of news that hits hardest. Determined to find out what happened to his childhood sweetheart, he searches through the tribes and estates of his bombed city for answers. It soon becomes clear that the two newspaper stories belong on the same page, and that Bane's world belongs to others - those willing to profit from gun arsenals, human trafficking and a Manchester in decay.

The Doll Princess introduces the mesmeric narrator, Henry Bane, a conflicted man caught up in a mire of evil, and his creator, Tom Benn - an assured and exhilarating new voice in literary crime fiction.

Review: "Tom Benn is set to be one of the distinctive crime writers of his generation. In Henry Bane he has created a sharp, sarcastic anti-hero with his own warped sense of honour and a narrative that is truly distinctive."--Shots Crime & Thriller e-zine

“A graduate of the UEA creative writing course, Benn is a sharply observant writer with a great eye for detail, but what really makes this book a cut above the average gangland thriller is the character of Bane himself.”--Laura Wilson, The Guardian

"a promising, foul-mouthed debut in which gangsters and good guys fight for supremacy in a Manchester that resembles a war zone.”--Julia Handford, The Sunday Telegraph

“[a] madly bloody but sometimes brilliant book”--Rebecca Armstrong, The Independent

“Tom Benn, Stockport born and bred, is that rare thing. A startlingly new, ridiculously stylish, home-grown voice. Despite more than a casual nod to a rain-sodden Hulme dialect, Benn’s debut is so full of energy and sharp one-liners, it will travel far and wide.”--Henry Sutton, Daily Mirror Book of the Week

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Doll Princess
Publisher: Ulverscroft Ltd
Publication Date: 2013
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Good