Big Jessie

'She emerged from a flurry of windblown rose petals, her pale skin interrupted at regular intervals by bands of red – scarlet bob, scarlet lips, cropped scarlet top, scarlet mini, scarlet knee socks, scarlet boots. She looked like a barber's pole, or a lolly that had to be licked.'

Scarlet plucks her twelve-string guitar with nails the colour of cocktail cherries and Belfast music hack, Jessie Black, is blown away. He charms his way on to her tour bus as her band head for Dublin. But the second they cross the border Jessie feels the heat of a sniper's bullet . . .

Who wants him dead? Rather, who doesn't want "Jay" Black dead? Any number of people might justifiably have pulled the trigger.

There's Scarlet's stalker, a gun-toting shoe fetishist. And the still-grieving widow of Northern Ireland's international goalkeeper, who Jay may have killed. There's the property magnate who was blackmailed into handing Jay Belfast's first-ever million-pound flat. Not to mention the RUC Chief Constable who has given Jay an ultimatum and the Sinn Fein leader who Jay must expose.

But it's when Scarlet goes missing that things get really serious.

A story of blackmail, corruption and exploding peacocks, 'Big Jessie' is the new comic thriller from the author of 'London Irish' and winner of the WH Smith Book Award for New Talent 2003.