City of Tiny Lights - Softcover

Neate, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141009071 ISBN 13: 9780141009070

Publisher: Penguin UK, 2006

Synopsis

***Now a film starring Riz Ahmed, Billie Piper, James Floyd, Cush Jumbo, Roshan Seth and Antonio Aakeel*** Meet Tommy Akhtar, Ugandan Asian cricket fan, devoted son, and not very successful private investigator with offices over his brother Gundappa's mini-cab firm in deepest West London. He's just woken up from his hangover (combing the parting on his tongue) when his next case comes through the door. It looks like just another investigation when hooker Melody comes into his office asking him to find her co-worker, Natasha, last seen meeting new client at a bar in Shepherd's Market. But as the search for Natasha intensifies, Tommy's world becomes increasingly sinister. He is drawn into a murder investigation, the criminal underworld, the world of fundamentalist religion and maybe even terrorist activities. Neate brilliantly explores the oddball underbelly and wierd cultural mix of London - The City of Tiny Lights - today and questions just what it really means to be British now. . .

About this title

About the Author

Patrick Neate is the author of four previous novels: Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko, which won a Betty Trask Award, Twelve Bar Blues, which won the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, The London Pigeon Wars, and City of Tiny Lights and Jerusalem. He lives in London.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Neate (Where You're At, 2004), whose previous books have been diverse, sprawling, and sometimes award winning, turns to crime. Tommy Akhtar is a Ugandan Indian private eye with a fondness for Wild Turkey and Benson & Hedges and an absolute mania for cricket. Oh, and he was also a mujahideen in Afghanistan. When a brassy hooker hires him to find her missing flatmate, Akhtar soon learns his mission is about far more than bad debt between working girls: the MI5 and CIA are working the same case, too. Neate has overwhelmed some readers with his torrential narrative, but here, in the service of a tightly plotted mystery/thriller, the ebullience of his writing lifts readers like a storm surge that carries them off the beach and right back to their beds. Akhtar is one-of-a-kind, his voice a rollicking blend of erudite thought delivered in delightfully crude slang. Political digressions are blunt but well informed and rich with irony. And a plot thread involving a terrorist threat in London has startling relevance after the events of last July. Neate waggishly calls this "Another Tommy Akhtar Investigation" (it's the first we've seen); let's hope he makes good on that promise. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin UK
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0141009071
• ISBN 13: 9780141009070
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336