"Where's the fuckin beak, Dean..."

Lately I have been learning A LOT of Scouse slang.

This book is ACE:

WRECKAGE stars Darren and Ally, the two scallies I mentioned here. Griffiths picks the story up from the very moment STUMP left off, which for some reason I consider a hugely bold thing to do. Did I describe Darren and Ally as "straight out of Central Casting at Brookside" in my earlier post? Shame on me. Actually no, shame not on me. They were a bit of yer typical scally in STUMP. But he's fleshed them out big time here, in WRECKAGE. And Darren... ah, Darren is a piece of work as nasty as any that Charles "nasty-piece-of-work-meister" Willeford came up with. And I'm a BIG Willeford fan.

Griffiths paints Liverpool like I've never seen it. He takes massive narrative liberties in order to show you what the city is like and why it's like it, even dipping back a couple hundred years to show you a wretched, starved Irish family trying to get across the water. True, he's interested in the characters above all else, but the payoff is that you get the whole city - smells, ghosts, menace and all. It ain't nice, but you get it alright. And you WANT it.

Nice one Niall.

Now, where'd I put me fuckin bugle?