Powder - Matthew Kneale

In June, 2006, Picador launch Picador Shots, a new series of pocket-sized books priced at 1. The Shots aim to promote the short story as well as the work of some Picador's greatest authors. They will be contemporarily packaged but ultimately disposable books that are the ideal literary alternative to a magazine.

Matthew Kneale's 'Powder' is to be one of the first Picador Shots. One of the stories from his recent collection, Small Crimes In An Age of Abundance, 'Powder' is an effecting, darkly funny story about Peter, a middle of the road, solicitor, who lives in a suburban street in London. His kids are leaving home and he is finding it hard to keep up with the neighbours and his colleagues at work, until, one day on his local common he discovers a large bag with a mobile phone and hundreds of plastic bags full of cocaine inside. What Peter decides to do with this bag, a decision he makes in a split second, will change his life for ever.

In 'Powder' Matthew Kneale has vividly captured the life on an ordinary person as he struggles to survive and do the 'right thing', and, in the end, managing neither.