cover image

What the blurb says: “Michael Redford died on his seventeenth birthday – the night Eddie picked him up off the street, shot him full of heroin and assaulted him. 

Now he’s Mikey and he works for Joss. With streaked blond hair and a cute smile, he sleeps by day and services clients at night. Sometimes he remembers his old life, but with what he’s become now, he knows there is no return to his comfortable middle-class background.

Then he makes a friend in Lee. A child of the streets, Lee demands more from friendship than Mikey is prepared to give. But the police are closing in on them now and Mikey’s not sure anymore who he really is – streetwise Mikey or plain Michael Redford.”

Set in the seedy world of London’s drug and prostitution rings, this is a harrowing and gritty story. However, as brutal as parts of this novel are, I found that I kept reading on, wanting to find out if Mikey could turn things around, get out of the horrendous situation he found himself in, and get some of his old life back.

This is a well written, fast paced thriller with plenty of twists and turns to keep the reader guessing. It’s gritty and has adult content, but is never gratuitous.

If you’re looking for hard-hitting realism, this could be well worth a read.

[With thanks to the author DJ Bennet for my copy of Hamelin’s Child]