Product Description

'My name is Billie Morgan And I am a murderer.' Billie is in her forties, running a little jewellery shop in Bradford, watching over her godson Natty, trying to live a quiet life, trying to forget the past. Because Billie has a lot of past to forget. She was a biker chick, one of the Devil's Own, real hardcore seventies Angels, speed and acid-fuelled road demons. She lived a life that was hurtling out of control and it ended in murder. Now, years later, she has to face the consequences. Beautifully written, dark but never despairing, Billie Morgan is a perfect fusion between social realism and classic noir; a powerful, passionate novel about an Inability to wipe evil from the slate of our lives. Taut like a Greek tragedy, the book is a moving, empathetic account of a woman's heroic attempt to escape her destiny.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #317211 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Joolz Denby was born in 1955 to an SAS father and a glamorous mother. She married an outlaw biker - a member of the Satan's Slaves - at 19. She regularly tours with cult underground band New Model Army and is an internationally respected spoken word artist and illustrator. She is the author of the novels Stone Baby and Corazon, and four collections of poetry and short stories.

Customer Reviews

Totally unputdownable!
Joolz Denby has the amazing talent of leading you into the world of her characters and making you care about them, making you feel what they feel, smell what they smell. The despair and mental torment in this suffered by Billie Morgan become real to you.

This is the kind of story that has no happy ending, just a kind of coping. It makes you glad that you are who you are - makes you realise that your own life is not so bad after all... You may not like your job, you may have big debts, various problems - but at least you aren't a character in this book, for that would be real cause for complaint.

I read my first Joolz Denby because of her New Model Army connections. I now read her because she is herself and I love her books.

Another gem from Joolz
As with Joolz's previous two novels, I could not put this down until I had finished it. The thing that strikes me with Joolz's writing is that the characters are like people that you know, your friends, enemies, and in the case of Billie's mother - my mother. This story is so well written that you will really care about Billie, and like me, continue reading to find out what happens to her.

On first reading, I found this darker than Corazon or Stone Baby, I felt the hopelessness of Billie's life as one thing lead to another, with a sense of inevitability about it all. Don't want to say much more so as to not give any of the story away.

I would thoroughly recommend thie book to anyone that has read and enjoyed Joolz's work before, and if you have not, then this is a perfect place to start - once you've read this one you'll be back for the others!

Bradford's muse hits the spot
Joolz Denby is a poet and speaker and this shines through her gorgeous prose. Her descriptions of Bradford are both beautiful and real, she evokes the city so well, in all its grimy reality. Indeed the city itself is almost a character in the book. Knowing Bradford fairly well it felt like she was describing a relative who can be sometimes embarrassing but occasionally brilliant.

Although the book has been put into the Crime genre it is so much more than that. The voice of the book is Billie Morgan, named for Billie Holiday by her father. Billie grows up in Bradford in the 70s and gets involved with a Biker Gang. This leads to a murder. The novel is told as a confessional leading the reader slowly to understand how the murder happened and why. Joolz' descriptions of the intricacies of family relationships are superb. You really feel that you can get under the skin of the characters - all of which have huge but loveable flaws. The overriding feeling I had when reading this novel was that this really happened and that the characters really do live in Bradford. It is shocking, devastating, fragile and real. I don't often re-read books but this is one I could read again.

Here's a taste of the prose to whet your appetite (on Bradford):

"Oh sure, it's a poor place; when the textile trade all but died poverty crept in on naked, rotting feet and soured things; clabbered the milk in babies' mouths and put a blighted fury in our young men's hearts that leads them to rash and brutal acts...But it's not grey; it's not dull - it's as fiery and drenched with colour as a Turner painting. It's a stone maze; a trap for the unwary - I'm not surprised poor old Londoners get culture shock..."