On Tick

In Dodge, business is rarely legal, friendship is rarely sensible, and somebody always owes somebody money. Renton, Django, Deggsy and their mates spend their week drifting between pubs, dodgy deals, borrowed cash and schemes that somehow make perfect sense at the time. Then thirty pairs of supposedly bargain Hi-Tec trainers turn out to be something else entirely — bright-red Converse, stolen from a Bristol community centre and wanted back by people who are considerably more organised than the men who bought them. While one deal unravels, another is already going wrong. Hampers disappear, fake money changes hands, old grudges resurface and a quiet visit from Bristol threatens to turn the local pub into the O.K. Corral. Through it all, life carries on: jukeboxes, late drinks, borrowed ladders, Monday Club, painting jobs, court appearances and the relentless arithmetic of who owes what to whom. On Tick is a fast-moving British comedy crime caper packed with pub banter, crooked deals, eccentric characters and the kind of criminal incompetence that somehow keeps everyone one step ahead of disaster. For readers who enjoy irreverent British humour, working-class characters, low-level crime and capers where nobody quite knows what they're doing — but everybody carries on anyway.