London Town - I K Watson

During the sixties the Krays and the Richardsons dominated London's criminal underworld. Once they were locked up, the Smiths became the dominant force. "The politicians and the councillors like to think they're in charge, but they're false pretenders, every one of them. They're alive today because they don't interfere. . ." But now the Smiths are in trouble: Old Tom Smith is dying and rival organisations are moving in. Dave Smith, Tom's eldest son, must take charge of the manor and make the crucial decisions in a world where the money and power of the drug trade are inescapable magnets. "The end of an era is drawing in. The men, the legends, are dying out or are shut away. . ." I K Watson's compelling novel moves through three generations, from the slums of the thirties to the horrors of Dunkirk and the Blitz, from the bombed city and the Londoners under siege to the eighties where another kind of siege is taking place. Written with astonishing power, London Town is on one level an affecting story of generational transitions, on another a brutal and exciting epic of gangland warfare. It will leave no reader unmoved.