Product Description

London. The 1960s. The capital is swinging, but underneath the boomtown there's a dark underbelly. Meet Harry Starks: club owner, racketeer, porn king, sociology graduate and keen Judy Garland fan. Harry's business is fronting violence with rough charm and cheap glamour; putting the frighteners on, performing menace while trying to desperately trying to jump the counter into legitimacy.

Five characters tell five tales that combine in an extraordinary narrative that is both an explosively paced thriller and brilliantly imagined sociological and topographical portrait of sixties London.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #86894 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"What's breaking into a bank compared with founding one?" Bertolt Brecht's provocative question opens Jake Arnott's first novel The Long Firm and sets the scene for its memorable exploration of the London underworld at the beginning of the 1960s. Five very different characters tell their five very different stories about "Torture Gang Boss" Harry Starks. A man who "liked to break people" but also a "frightened little child" is how his lover and kept boy Terry recalls him; a "lower-class tearaway", according to the Tory lord who frequents his erotic parties; a depressive with a diabolical mind, one who likes to "stage manage the fear", in the eyes of his various criminal and starlet peers; a product of working-class subculture and a living critique of capitalism, concludes the radical young sociologist who teaches him in prison. Harry Starks is the beginning and end of The Long Firm, a compelling showman who embodies the brutal realism and impossible dreams at the heart of Arnott's vision of London low life. The glamour and corruption of that life drive this story but Arnott manages to weave cliche into enigma, myth into inquiry, in a way that revitalises the well-worn images of the mad and the bad. As Starks would put it, keeping Brecht's question before the readers' eyes, "It's all about the economy of power, Lenny". --Vicky Lebeau

Time Out
‘Gripping ... slumming it doesn't get much better than this'

Review
'Truly fascinating ... Arnott's ability to powerfully resurrect an era is astonishing' (Jimmy Boyle, Guardian )

'One of the smartest, funniest and original novels you will read all year ... Arnott is quite brilliant at excavating the cultural minutiae of the time to bring the period vividly to life' (Independent on Sunday )

'Compulsive reading, powerful writing with an evocative feel for the bleaker side of the Swinging Sixties' (The Times )

‘Gripping ... slumming it doesn’t get much better than this’ (Time Out )

'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 Saville Row lapel' (Independent on Sunday )

'Pulp Fiction so polished as to be immaculate' (New Statesman )

'The powerful, stylish writing hooks the reader from the first page. One of the most impressive first novels I've read in years.' (Mail on Sunday )

Customer Reviews

An ambitious sweep across the decades......
Well researched story of sixties London gangland told from different perspectives - rentboy, would be actress, corrupt MP, fellow criminal Jack the Hat and hippy sociology lecturer. Focuses on Harry Starks, a charismatic gangster with very brutal tendencies.

An ambitious sweep across the decades which includes factual figures - Kray brothers, Judy Garland etc. The inclusion of the sociology/Open University part was very entertaining and there was a satisfactorily dramatic ending. I listened to The Long Firm on an audiobook - very well read by Dave John.

The first book I have read by Jake Arnott - but will certainly look out for more....

Fantastic
This is an episodic, fantastic page turner set in the 60's. The Kray comparisons are very obvious, but do not spoil or detract from this page turner.
Sex-Drugs-Violence-Crime-60'S Glamour and Grime are all to be found in spades in this book. Not for the faint hearted.
The central character Harry Sparkes is big enough to carry any novel of this genre, or most other genres, The minor characters all have their part to play, and are skilfully written.
Fantastic, I recommend it, even if like me, you have no interest in the Krays or 60's swinging gangland London.
PS Did I say I thought it was Fantastic?

The Long Firm
...This is an extremely pacy book... sometimes sickening in the violence that was a part of those times and is a part of our times too. Harry is not a nice person. He uses and abuses people... but, nonethless he has a certain charm which makes him a magnet for the 5 narrators in the book, whatever their motives...

I only bought this book to cover the boredom of air travel, but came off my flights intoxicated by this book and by the quantity of beer I swallowed to keep up... A brilliant first novel.