Product Description

Gun law is out of control in Liverpool. Organised gangs fight it out for control of clubland and with it, regulation of the lucrative supply of narcotics. Supremacy in this violent world is short-lived as younger, hungrier and more ruthless gangs move in. Against this brutal backdrop, three South End villains pursue a dying trade. Ged, Moby and Ratter are Blaggers. Old-fashioned highwaymen with two decades of meticulously planned jobs behind them. With the Christmas season in full swing, Ged is planning a job that'll see the boys through until spring. As usual, he won't give them any details until the morning of the blag. Until then, they have to stay off the street and keep out of trouble. The problem is that Moby loves to go out. A week before the blag, an incident in a lapdance bar nearly leads to a gang war. Ratter, meanwhile, has long since outgrown the needless danger of the blag. He's invested his loot in the booming property sector, converting banks, churches and warehouses into apartments. He wanted to cut his links with Ged a long time ago, but has his own sinister reasons for staying on board. As the make-or-break heist approaches, Ged needs to summon all his street nous and killer instinct just to survive. And even then he needs friends in low places to ensure that the stains vanish without trace.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56854 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Outlaws, Moby and his brothers-in-arms, Ged and Ratter revel in the glory of being "Faces", respected kingpins of the Mersey underworld. As Moby, a fast-living, wisecracking Scouse entrepreneur with a flexible attitude to the law, and a crippling fondness for lap-dancers, says, "I do not half mind being a Somebody in Liverpool."But as the season of goodwill approaches, and the need to make fast cash looms like an old enemy, the Outlaws see that their world is changing. A new breed of somebodies is clamouring at the gates of their little kingdom--a growing army of ruthless young wannabes, trigger-happy upstarts for whom words such as Honour and Loyalty are best consigned to the history books. Retirement and respectability suddenly seem like enticing prospects for the Outlaws, but can they get out alive before their own petty rivalries tear them apart? The "noble thief" is a cliché, and so is the formula of villains killing themselves in their bid to become pillars of the local Golf Club. But Sampson's fourth novel offers a thoroughly fresh take on a timeless story. Outlaws transcends the dreary preoccupations of gangsta fiction through two things: its vividly drawn characters and its ceaselessly witty use of language. Its trio of narrators are not "Goodfellas" with Brookside accents, but complex men struggling to conquer a thoroughly real world. They do so with a mixture of charm, cunning and unforgivable viciousness--and the result, for the reader, is an exhilarating battle between sympathy and revulsion. Fans of Awaydays and Powder will relish a further excursion into the mysteries of modern-day Merseyside, and everyone looking for a comic, intelligent gangster yarn can stop searching. Ged, Ratter and Moby might be struggling to pull off the Big One, but Kevin Sampson has done it in spades. --Matthew Baylis

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‘GoodFellas on the Mersey…Compelling'

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'...Sampson’s Liverpudlian banter cracks along like a charlied-up Tarbie. Compelling.’

Customer Reviews

A real return to form.
Sampson's first two novels ("Awaydays" and "Powder") were brilliant, savage, witty, and had a marvellous sense of time and place. He dropped the ball horribly with "Leisure", but I'm happy to say that he's returned to brilliance with "Outlaws".

Whereas "Awaydays" touched on the fringes of the world of organised crime, "Outlaws" is firmly located there. A bunch of ageing Liverpool hard men who for various reasons want to pull off that last job... this is almost "Reservoir Dogs" with tracksuits and expensive trainers in some respects.

Sampson's real gift is for language, and in "Outlaws" his protagonists all have distinctive voices, different ways of thinking. The inevitability of the climax is perhaps a little disappointing, but the way we get there is highly entertaining.

As a thriller with a high degree of social insight, this stands comparison with Jake Arnott; as a Merseyside tale, Sampson admits of no equals. A fine book.

pure brilliant. That is a fact
Encountered this book after reading 'Awaydays,' by the way, and its a great read to be fair. know where I'm going. No two ways about it this book is pure brilliant.That is a fact. The way it evokes working class life in Liverpool by the way, the crime, it's characters, their verbal tics makes it seem real rather than mere caricature in fairness, knowmean. Others in line with the blurb on the book have described it as Goodfellas on the Mersey, Scorcese with a scouse ascent, know where I'm going, and while I can see what they're saying in fairness, its more Roddy Doyle with a scouse ascent and violent tendencies, and thats the God's honest truth. That is a fact. End of.

Liverpool Noir at its finest
This is a truly stunning book. If you're a fan of hard boiled lo-life fiction then this is one you must not miss. Sampson is the Scally Scorsese and this is his Mean Streets. OUTLAWS is an utterly compelling tale of three South Liverpool hardmen who've been left behind by the new wave of sophisticated drug crime. They're old-skool stick up men with all the archaic morality that comes with it. When they run into lumber with a slick new firm over an incident in a lap-dance bar, all hell lets loose. And does it! The action is tautly scripted, the plotting masterfully handled. OUTLAWS would make a wonderful film and, from me (a gangsta film snob) there can be no higher compliment. This is definitely my book of the year so far.