London Irish

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Description

Half-Irish and half-Scots, Bic runs a moderately-successful stall selling crepes in Greenwich market in the shadow of the Millennium dome (which is news to his father who thinks he's dragging his heels a bit over his botany degree). He's a decent enough fellow, quite organized really, with his own set of rules - although he has, he is the first to admit, broken most of them. Well, for starters, he spends far too much time in the pub - and then there's that one about not sleeping with another older (and with a predilection towards extreme violence) man's wife...And Bic's dream, while not topping the charts in the ambition stakes, is decent enough: to meet the right girl, return to Ulster, settle down and start Northern Ireland's first ostrich farm. But things haven't been going too well recently: there was the flat below his which burnt to a cinder leaving its incumbent (deceased) melted to the loo seat; then a fellow stall-holder (now also deceased) seems to have hit the deck (literally) of the nearby 'Cutty Sark' in suspicious circumstances and now Chris Smith (yes, that Chris Smith - the esteemed Culture Secretary at the time) has gone and run over Bic's beloved dog while super-vising the arrangements for London's world-beating Millinnial celebrations. But then a silver lining - or rather a mysterious, somewhat elusive raven-haired lining - appears in the guise of Roisin. Not only has she taken over the stall opposite Bic's, but she's also from the mother-country, heart-stoppingly beautiful and, as far as Bic can tell and if you don't count her somewhat over-protective brothers, single. OK, so while wedding bells might still be a little way off, Bic felt things were looking up - until, that is, the morning he woke to find not only did he have blinder of a hangover but he was also now BRITAIN'S MOST WANTED MAN and on the run, with Roisin as his hostage and 43 murders to his name.

Reviews

'Very fresh, very funny. I laughed until I stopped' -- Colin Bateman

Author Bio

Zane Radcliffe was born in Bangor, Northern Ireland in 1969. After graduating from Queen's University Belfast he moved to London in 1994 to become an advertising copywriter. He is now a Creative Director at Newhaven, a really good advertising agency in Edinburgh. His first novel, London Irish (2002), earned him the WHSmith 'People's Choice' New Talent Award. This follows the success of his first short story, My Dog (1974), which was awarded a B+ and a Big Red Tick by Miss Hasard at Ballyholme Primary School. His second novel, Big Jessie, is also published in Black Swan.