Canteen culture - Ike Eze-Anyika

Winner of the 1998 Saga Prize (for first novels by black British or Irish writers), Canteen Culture is an uproarious exposure by a former policeman of what really goes on under the blue lamp.Bubba, Jazz, Speedy, Lionel, Saddam and Sponge know every trick in the book. They hang out in seedy pubs, enjoy a good punch-up, and generally find themselves sleeping it off in the cells. Low lifes? Petty villains? No - just a group of police officers on one of London's least enviable beats. They dream of winning the Lottery and leaving it all behind. But then a less legal way of making a fortune comes along, and the odds are better than fourteen million to one . . .