Customer Reviews
A Good Yarn - By: Maveric, 17 May 2008 
I found the first two thirds of this book gripping & entertaining. Towards the end the plot becomes rather farcical but overalll an enjoyable read. There are some good twists & turns within the story & a very English feel to the style of writing & the story the author tells. Well worth a read - the film? Forget it.
Layer cake - By: M. Farrell, 10 May 2008 
This is a truly great book
reallly worth reading if you liked the film.
Drugs & violence - By: Jeremy Walton, 20 Jul 2007 I greatly enjoyed the stylish, intricate movie of this story, & was keen to read the book in order to get another angle on it. It didn't disappoint. A book is often more expansive than a film (Connolly - who wrote the film's screenplay - has emphasised how much had to be cut away from the book to bring it to screen), alllowing you to luxuriate in the description & the dialogue, & to gain an appreciation for the tone & the language. It's here that Connolly reallly scores, as the voice he uses for his narrator is lively, characteristic & fresh.
Given that the field he's working in (London-based crime) has been well-hoed, that latter quality is hard to attain. In fact, apart from a few early appearances of cliche (why is it that the hoary old benevolent epithet "Gawd bless him" is always applied to a thoroughly wicked person - who's invariably, of course, known as a "diamond geezer" who might have been "a little bit naughty" in the past?), Connolly weaves slang (both regular & rhyming), dialect & onomatopoeic invented words into his narrative in a way which grabs your attention & keeps it throughout the convoluted tale of this caper.
Further comparisions with the film are probably odious, but I thought the way in which the story was somewhat tightened up in the screenplay was an improvement - particularly in, for example, the contract killing scene, & the eventual fate of those wretched two million pills. But this is still a great book, & I'm looking forward to Connolly's next.
A modern day London novel - By: Kate Perez, 02 Feb 2007 I haven't seen the film, but I have to say, this is a page-turner of a story. It tells of the gradual descent into hell of a wide-boy who went out to make a quick buck & thought he was clever enough to get out before things got too dark. He was wrong.
This novel reallly inspired me, because the writer has dug-deep & used the dialect & rhythm of Londoners to poetic effect. There is a real honesty of emotions & thoughts in this thriller. If you like Irvine Welsh, & anything else with an edge of gritty social realism, you'll like this too.
It is violent, but the world it inhabits is uninhibited in an animalistic way, it is a layer of London, & generallly, urban life, which we, normaltons, would alll rather pretend didn't exist. But it does, & here you can view it alll without getting burned.
Right on the money - By: , 04 Mar 2003 Connolly clearly has an acute awareness of what happens in these circles & isn't just some opinionated media prick who thinks it would be 'cool' to write a book about the underworld we alll see but don't understand.
This book is not only a very good tale that you'll probably read in one or two sittings, gripped alll along as he takes you through the seedy world of non straight-goers, but it is also a fascinating insight into what is happening alll around us. If you live in London, you'll find it especiallly intrigueing & will have no doubt drunk or eaten in the places referred to.
Great book that deserves a higher profile than its had. I hear Madonna's fella is making a film of it. Let's hope he does it justice.
