The Crust On Its Uppers

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First published in 1962, The Crust On Its Uppers, Derek Raymond s first novel (written when he was Robin Cook) is a gripping tale of class betrayal. With ruthless precision, and a great deal of humour, it brings vividly to life a London of spivs, crooked toffs and bent coppers. It s a tale of someone who wanted to go and go - who was sick of the dead-on-its-feet upper crust he was born into, that he didn t believe in didn t want, whose values were meaningless, that did nothing but hold him back from his first nanny onwards. I wanted to chip my way out of that background which held me like a flea in a block of ice, and crime was the only chisel I could find. Derek Raymond

Reviews

Tremendous black comedy of Chelsea gangland, written and set in the early Sixties, on the cusp of swinging London Face Peopled by a fast-talking shower of queens, spades, morries, slags, shysters, grifters and grafters of every description, it is one of the great London novels New Statesman The Crust on its Uppers is the kosher article by a man who was on the down-escalator all his life Sunday Times

Author Bio

Derek Raymond was born Robin Cook in 1931. The son of a textile magnate, he dropped out of Eton aged sixteen and spent much of his early career among criminals. The Factory series followed his early novels, The Crust on Its Uppers and A State of Denmark. His literary memoir The Hidden Files was published in 1992. He died in London in 1994.