The House of Rumour

It all began in 1941 for young sci-fi writer Larry Zagorski; from the vantage point of the 21st century this book takes a look back over the previous seven decades; each chapter is from the viewpoint of one of the ensemble cast. Injected with many historical facts this is the purported secret histor......more

Why this wasn't longlisted for the Booker Prize perhaps tells you all you need to know about the Booker longlist. Unconventionally structured, in that the plot is overarching, built up through several cross-chapter strands, with characters ranging from the real (including Ian Fleming on the slide in......more

How I love this book! I've never read Jake Arnott before, thinking he might be a superior form of a pulp writer, judging by the subject matter of many of his previous books. I was amazed then, how literate and elegant the book is. The individual strands hold up on their own as mini character studies......more

This one’s a bit of a surprise: a non-genre author better known for his tales of homosexuals, contemporary gangsters and seventies pop culture, a Brit who gave rise to the term ‘geezer chic’, turns in an ambitious piece of genre fiction that cleverly blends facts with fiction. Result: an occasionall......more

'I am of a generation that filled pulp magazines with cheap prophecy. Now the events in my own lifetime seem even more fantastic.' Such ponderous blurb should have been a warning, but with happy memories of Jake Arnott's previous bestsellers - The Long Firm, He Kills Coppers, Johnny, Remember Me - I......more