Big Sky

A rising star in the firmament of British fiction, Gareth Creer's; Big Sky is narrated by a mute called Jimmy Mack. A good man who has to do bad things, he has spent his childhood in and out of children's homes. A kind of benign Fagin figure, he is the head of a family of similarly disaffected youths living on the North-East English coast. Surviving on a diet of petty crime, life is sweet enough until a bungled drug scam designed to rake in enough cash to set them up in Spain puts Jimmy perilously into the hands of Flint, the local mafia boss - and a woman. The pay off for trying to get a piece of the big time is that Flint dispatches them to Holland to deal with some unfinished business. And for the first time Jimmy finds that he is no longer in control. Seen through the eyes of the mild and likeable Jimmy, the action - some of it violent - is refracted through the lens of his own complicated past, and gradually a picture builds of a man who is desperate to find a sense of belonging.
Shrugging off the conventions of countless drug-deal-gone-bad thrillers, Big Sky combines a seductive, almost poetic prose with a thrilling and utterly believable plot that drives the novel to its optimistic conclusion.