Layer Cake

The inspiration for the major motion picture starring Daniel Craig: a high-octane crime novel set in the dangerous London underworld of the 1990s.

Kingpins, dealers, rival gangs, false allegiances, bad faith, and good money. There are many levels to the world of drugs lurking beneath the polished surface of London—a "layer cake" of crime that can chew up and spit out even the most experienced of players. Though he's only twenty-nine, our narrator ("If I told you my name, you'd be as clever as me") has made a small fortune in cocaine, enough to retire by thirty if he plays his cards right.

But then word comes down that Jimmy Price, one of the biggest Dons in the city, has a job for him, one last big score that could set him up for good. All he has to do is find Charlotte Ryder—and then figure out how to escape the tangled web of the underworld alive.

A high-intensity novel filled with bluffs and double crosses, dangerous enemies and even more treacherous allies, Layer Cake is a "walloping debut" (Kirkus Reviews), guaranteed to take you on a breathless, breakneck ride from the first page to the final con.

"A storming piece of work: funny and serious by turns, with an abiding sense of conviction." —The Guardian

© 2007 Atlantic Monthly Press (Ebook): 9780802199720

Release date

Ebook: 1 December 2007