He Kills Coppers - Couverture souple

[A] savagely dark and mesmerising tale ... Arnott brings [1966 London] to life in brilliant color. He has an eavesdropper's ear for voices, delivering them in wonderfully clipped cadences reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett, and a nose for pungent details ... All of Arnott's bit players are exquisitely drawn. Like the best crime novels, "He Kills Coppers" is not really about crime or even about criminals. It's about cultural disintegration, a city stuck in the shadowy interlude between the end of empire and whatever was coming next. There is pitch-black darkness at the heart of the story, no doubt about it, but it is brightened by genuine, cinematic pleasures. Arnott positively revels in the filthy, rotting decadence of gangster-era London, spinning a tale that has the authority of well-researched fact and the felicity of fiction. (Hugo Lindgren, New York Times)

'Arnott is a craftsman at what he does, a real cabinetmaker of pulp fiction, with everything nicely dovetailed' Sunday Times (Sunday Times)

'Compelling...Skilful blending of fact and fiction, with real-life villains and occasional straight-arrow detectives squinting out from behind their masks. Stand-out appearance by gossipy, gay peer (a lookalike Lord Boothby) and a brilliant and plausible twist to the plot which installs murderous Billy Porter as romantic People's Hero.' Literary Review

Propels Arnott further into a league of his own (Independent on Sunday)

'You close the book convinced by the pervasive sense of sleaze and blackly amused by the failings of the unhappy protagonists.' The Times

Intoxicating ... brings together the crisis over contemporary working class masculinity and sexuality viewed through the lens of corrupted police culture, the politics of Class War and London's criminal underworld (Scotland on Sunday)

You close the book convinced by the pervasive sense of sleaze and blackly amused (The Times)

'It's a very male, 1960s world, where private shames were only matched by public swagger; and, because the narrative deals in universal truths, it propels Arnott even further into a league of his own. You don't have to be a crime fan to enjoy his books, you just have to be interested in the lives of ordinary, fallible people.' Independent on Sunday

'Easily as good, if not better, than the superb Long Firm, Arnott returns to the world of 1960s gangsters, except this time it's the cops as well as the robbers who take centre stage. The novel is a stylish tour-de-force, Arnott's taut, lucid prose moving the reader effortlessly from the 1966 World Cup to the 1980s and the age of Thatcher's Boot Boys and the Battle of the Beanfield. Smashing.' Big Issue

This is a fine piece of work that can only increase Arnott's reputation further. (Time Out)

August 1966, the long hot summer of World Cup euphoria is suddenly shattered by a brutal crime that shocks a nation seemingly at ease with itself. Three characters' fates are irrevocably bound up with this event and consequences that reverberate across three decades. An ambitious detective dragged into intrigues of corruption. A gutter press journalist with a nose for a nasty story. And a disaffected petty criminal pushed over the edge by a violent crime that haunts him. An epic story that looks at morality and corruption on both sides of the law and at the very heart of the state.