Swear down - Russ Litten

A young gang leader is found stabbed on a Hackney estate - but two people confess to the murder.Ndekwe, an ambitious, newly promoted Detective Sergeant within a subtly racist police force, believes the more obvious of the two confessions: from McKenzie, a teenager from the estate with a police record of juvenile crime.But why does Jack Shepherdson - an ex-merchant seaman in his sixties - come forward with his own confession? Is he covering for McKenzie, his colleague in the bar they worked at? Or is there more truth in his statement than Ndekwe at first believes?As we listen, with Ndekwe, to their stories - to the lives of the segregated and unheard - a heartbreaking and suspenseful story emerges.

Russ Litten has written drama for television, radio and Hollywood film. He currently works as a writer in prisons and lives with his family in Kingston Upon Hull.

Compelling and utterly convincing - this is real life, not just a crime novel
Jake Arnott

Russ Litten has taken guidance and lessons from the great modern Americans - Richard Price, Elmore Leonard - and the concrete walkways and stairwells and gaols and dives of this septic isle and has written a gripping, magnificently paced book that, for four days, accompanied me from bar to bench to bath to bed. It is superb.
Niall Griffiths

A gritty urban crime thriller ... Litten invests craft and energy in establishing the individual voices .. it's easy to imagine Swear Down being successfully adapted for television
Metro - Ben Felsenburg

A thrilling and sometimes darkly comic look at lives lived on the margins
Hull Daily Mail - Nick Quantrill

Subtle, moving and disturbing
Guardian