Patrick Brodie is on the way up. He's a chancer, but unlike his drunkard father, he wants to make sure that anything he accrues stays close by. He also knows exactly how far he's prepared to go to get what he wants. Before long, Patrick has taken out the old guard and become a legend in his own lifetime.

Called in to investigate an aspiring actress accused of staging her own abduction, psychologist Alex Delaware is indifferent when it seems as though the case is going nowhere. When the girl is savagely murdered, Alex's seemingly straightforward brief becomes a lot more complicated.

Mike Engleby says things that others dare not even think. When the novel opens in the 1970's, he is a university student, having survived a 'traditional' school. A man devoid of scruple or self-pity, Engleby provides a witheringly frank account of English education.

Just before Danny Cadogan's 14th birthday, his father leaves. Having drunkenly run up a gambling debt he cannot pay, Big Dan Cadogan takes the easy way out. Determined to protect his mother, brother and sister, something changes in Danny and, overnight, he turns into a young man set on making his way in a violent and dangerous world.

Lev is on his way from Eastern Europe to Britain, seeking work. Behind him loom the figures of his dead wife, his beloved young daugher and his outrageous friend Rudi who - dreaming of the wealthy West - lives largely for his battered Chevrolet. Ahead of Lev lies the deep strangeness of the British: their hostile streets, their clannish pubs, their obsession with celebrity. London holds out the alluring possibility of friendship, sex, money and a...