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Synopsis
Richie, a man fresh out on licence and desperate for money to support his new family, agrees to pick up a converted air pistol for local drug dealer Goose. When Richie is beaten up and robbed, he's forced to retrieve the gun, as well as question his career choice. “Banks is part of the post-Rankin generation for whom hardboiled is not just a state of mind but a reality. Tough-guy colloquial prose and a pace fast enough to skin a rabbit, at the service of a tale of down-and-dirty realism: this is fiery stuff.” — the Guardian Ray Banks is the author of four previous crime novels: The Big Blind, No More Heroes, Saturday's Child, and Donkey Punch. He currently lives in Newcastle but is known as part of the Scottish crime writing scene. He also writes for the rock magazine Bullet. Banks joins John Harvey, Stephen Booth, Rod Duncan and Lawrence Block on the Crime Express.
Gun is biting, bleak noir with a boot in the gutter and a shooter in the waistband. Banks, author of the outstanding No More Heroes and Beast of Burden has sharpened his already laser-edged storytelling in this novella about a bottom-feeder crim sent to collect a handgun. British crime fiction doesn't get much grittier than this foray into the mean streets of petty crooks and knuckle-breaking thugs. Banks portrays the street trash and derros of the inner city with an acuity few of his peers can match. But it's his empathetic treatment of their woes that shines out in Gun. This is a tale that speaks up for the futility of those trapped in the slum, those seeking a better life when the only options point to prison or a needle. For such a short, and seemingly prosaic, tale, Banks crams in an incredible amount. Like Hemingway's iceberg principle, there's much more going on between the lines that the keen reader will ponder on. This is no mean writing feat, and one too rarely achieved these days. Gun is a buy in the morning and devour by the afternoon mini-masterpiece that will whet the appetite for more from this talented writer.
Tony Black
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