Product Description

What right do you have to protect your family and property from violent criminals? Richard Littlejohn has explored this and other burning social issues in his work as a journalist. Now he has written a fast-paced powerhouse of a novel, part polemic, part comedy, part tragedy, in which a former policeman seeks justice for an attack on his teenage daughter, and is thwarted at every turn. Mickey is an ordinary bloke, doing what he thinks is right to protect those he loves, but when he is attacked in his own home he is forced to take the law into his own hands, with fatal consequences. His arrest for murder turns him into a cause cel?bre and he is soon lost in a maze of dodgy lawyers, illegal asylum-seekers, self-publicising politicians, politically correct social workers, desperate journalists and rabble-rousing shock-jocks. To Hell in a Handcart is a rollercoaster thriller with an unforgettable cast of characters that grabs on page one and never lets go.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #188393 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-04
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 425 pages

About the Author
Richard Littlejohn is an award-winning journalist and TV and radio broadcaster, famed for his forthright and controversial views on topical events and his hard-hitting campaigns. He has a long-running weekly column in the Sun, Britain's bestselling daily newspaper, has presented his own TV series and regularly hosts 606, the popular football phone-in show on Radio 5 Live.

Customer Reviews

So witty
Richard Littlejohnson has to be one of the greatest minds of our generation. The breadth of his knowledge of UK politics is immense. His devastatingly witty and repetitious use of comic stereotypes has catapulted him to his rightful place as Islington's favourite comedian.

There are many folk who have knocked Littlejohnson, saying there is no place for his pro-gay, bleeding-heart liberal opinions in the journal of truth that is the Daily Mail. Some would say he's a friend of Dorothy. Others would say he's just an overpaid hack, who will write any old nonsense to make a quick buck.

I say Littlejohnson's knockers are all wrong.

Buy this book. Alternatively, smash yourself over the head with a brick. The effect is quite similar.

reactionary drivel
It's often said of Richard Littlejohn that he speaks for the silent majority in Britain. Unfortunately, rather like the Conservative Party whose ideas are so close to his own, he actually only speaks for a loud, paranoid minority. This offensive (and offensively poorly written) tome is full of the knee-jerk rightwing politics we continually hear from the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Conservative Pary. It seems that Richard Littlejohn lives in an island very much like Britain, but without the tolerance, respect for others and liberalism that make the British people (which includes people with brown skin, gay people and even - gasp!- people who don't think the Sun is the source of all wisdom) so great. Those of us who live in the real Britain know that this rambling, incoherent cynical attempt at a novel is just that - fiction. That's why the Tories were so resoundingly rejected on June 7th.

A strangely toothless novel from Littlejohn.
For all the praise and condemnation heaped on this novel, it really has nothing much to say. The attacks on immigration, crime and political correctness are made over and over without giving any real insight into these issues, or offering anything new. The characters are cartoon stereotypes, and the dialogue is generally poor. Littlejohn cannot write a simile to save his life either. On the plus side, his direct and blunt style does have a certain charm.

When the book came out Littlejohn said how glad he was that the left had reacted with horror to it. But did they? As a guardian reading lefty I do not find this book offensive as I cannot take it seriously. No one should. Maybe that's the point.

...The main character is married to the daughter of a Greek immigrant (lest we should think him racist), and Littlejohn is often careful to offer both sides of the story (even if it's clear where his sympathies ultimately lie). The scene in which a repeat young offender is up before the law is an obvious example of Littlejohn's ability to show 'both sides' of the argument.

This book does not satirise or savage Blair's Britain, but does give a snapshot of a peculiarly British trait of right-wing paranoia. Littlejohn clearly sees himself as something of a rebel, taking on the liberal elite...