A long firm is a particular type of scam perpetrated by British gangs on unsuspecting innocents. Harry Starks is a kind of fraud, too. He likes to think of himself as an impresario in roaring-60s London, a club owner. Certainly, he is a romantic but, in truth, he is a gangster, a rival of the infamous Krays and every bit as ruthless (and gay).
He has an expensive flat in Chelsea full of scrapbooks showing him with Sonny Liston, Johnny Ray, Ruby Ryder, and other celebrities who appear at his club. Even Judy Garland. He likes to hobnob with fighters and performers and, recently, a member of parliament whose allegiance he has cultivated. Harry collects them, as if proximity will give him legitimacy.
Harry Starks is a force, a contradiction. Harry is ingenuous and evil. He is menacing and ruthless, yet compelling, a romatic who insists on honor, insists on loyalty, on his cut of the cosmic pie. His generosity is as renowned as his barbarity, and he is very generous.
'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 cliches of the genre and makes them sexy and freshly interesting'
Observer
I simply could put it down, couldn't stop until I'd finished it. It tooke me right back to the times and brought back the fear - the real cold fear - of the period (
Terry O'Neill, 60s photographer)
'Done so cannily that it virtually winks at you'
The Sunday Times
Gripping ... slumming it doesn't get much better than this (
Time Out)
'Very funny, oddly touching, and unobtrusively perceptive"
Evening Standard
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)
'Truly fascinating ... Arnott's ability to powerfully resurrect an era ... is astonishing. A great read'
Guardian
'The Long Firm manages to hook you from the first. It is compulsive reading, powerful writing with an evocative feel for the bleaker side of the swinging Sixties'
The Times
'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
'Arnott brilliantly captures the gaudy, glamorous, seedy and sordid side of the 60s underworld and show business society. A must-read' Elle
