Vinnie Got Blown Away

The books are about a multi-racial community in which loyalty to your mates is more important than following the rules of society. This is a community with very little hope of finding jobs, status and money: the traditional aims of society. Instead, the community has its own aims and its own ways of surviving. It has resilience, it has humour and it knows what a fast buck looks like. Some of its characters break the law, some don't; but they all know how life is.Brilliantly reviewed on its initial release in 1995, Vinnie Got Blown Away holds a unique place in the crime fiction canon, and is ripe for rediscovery by a new generation of readers. It is now recognised as being one of the British crime novels that one has to read.The second and third novels in the series will be published by HopeRoad in 2015.

Nicky Burkett finds his friend Vinnie dead at the bottom of a tower block. They have to find the villains - more serious criminals than themselves. The result is a hilarious hybrid of Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino, with dialogue that crackles off the page, unforgettable characters and an authentic sense of place.Nicky Burkett finds his childhood friend Vinnie dead at the bottom of a tower block. He and his mates have a code of conduct which makes revenge inevitable. They have to find the villains - much more serious criminals than themselves - and then they have to take them on. The result is a hilarious hybrid of Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino, with dialogue that crackles off the page, unforgettable characters and an authentic sense of place.Darkly comic, stylish and violent, Vinnie Got Blown Away offers a radical contrast from the British tradition of a murder mystery among the middle classes. It mixes without discrimination among black, white and Asian communities; it follows their speech patterns: cockney and Caribbean unite. It demonstrates the resilience in these communities, an ability to survive against all outside pressures and values.Walthamstow is stuck on the end of the north east of London. It is part of London but it inhabits a world of its own. Vinnie Got Blown Away is the first of five novels by Jeremy Cameron describing the area. This first book is set partly in prison, where Nicky Burkett tells his tale and reflects on life.It is part detective story, part thriller.