London Large: Sharp and Short (London Large Short Stories, #1)
Description
Meet DI Harry Hawkins. 'H' to friends and enemies alike. He's not an easy man to love. But when the chips are down he's the man you want on your side, the man who'll get you justice. Whatever it takes.
Sharp and Short tracks him through a series of the defining moments that made him who he is. By turns intense, tragic and comic the six stories span 40 years and see H maturing in a world full of both love and violence.
Can he save a friend from the clutches of an IRA death squad? Escape with his life after meting out rough justice to a gangland boss? Survive a battle with the demon drink as the mounting evil he faces threatens to crush him?
These stories, and more, are an absolute must for anyone who likes a cracking good yarn or has an interest in the development of a flawed but heroic character, a man who will do whatever it takes to do some good in our dark world.
TRIGGER WARNING:
If you require a trigger warning of any kind then this book is NOT for you.
More details
Persons
Roy and Garry Robson are, unsurprisingly, brothers from the Elephant and Castle, south east London.
Their father (variously a pig farmer, cab driver, haulage contractor and general ducker and diver) and mother (homemaker, cook and doctor's receptionist with a well-timed left hook) raised them and their siblings with some old fashioned south London working class values. These included hard work, respect for their elders and a willingness to duck and dive when required.
They have endeavoured, with varying degrees of success, to maintain the values their parents tried to instill in them. One day, whilst enjoying a beer or two, they decided to write a Crime Thriller Series. The gritty, pulsating and stylish London Large series is the result.
Roy lives in Bromley and works as a Service Delivery Manager for an International IT Consultancy. Garry lives in Krakow and is now, of all things, a sociology professor. Both career choices served as a source of confusion and humour to their parents, who were born and raised in the days before computers and sociology professors existed.
Although Harry 'H' Hawkins, the protagonist of the London Large novels, shares some of their old-fashioned values, he is not based upon Garry or Roy, neither of whom would survive the first chapter of a Harry Hawkins novel.
