Beal and black humoured cult novel set in the nascent spoken word scene of late 80s London. It is the late 80s and Punk is long dead. Not everyone made it. In London E1: the leftovers and left behind are still alive and still dreaming. Facing up to Thatcherism, despondency, drugs and desire. This is a world where everything is negotiable and everyone is searching for something, if only for the way out. Keith 'Spike' Williams is looking for a spark to ignite his life. Going nowhere until his old friend, the mysterious Gene Campbell reappears on the scene with a pocketful of hope and a crazy dream. The Big City Beats are born - a hard-faced Spoken Word act; arbiters of attitude and addiction, holding up a mirror to an apathetic, doom-ridden society. Spike follows in Gene's litter-strewn wake into the gutters and alleyways of Whitechapel and neon-lit streets of Soho, where dreams turn to nightmares, reality bites hard and not everyone is going to make it out alive. Bleak and black humoured, Glenn Carmichael and Kevin Evans's underground novel has been long overdue a resurrection. A fast-paced quest for 'kicks and meaning' in a London that has gone for good. Martin Millar meets Raymond Carver meets Hubert Selby Jr. in Spike's search for something, anything, approximating truth, somewhere in the treachery and dereliction of London's E1.
