The bobby dazzlers - Andrew Martin

If you were looking to hire a crack team of criminals to undertake a tricky and delicate burglary, the Bobby Dazzlers would be your worst nightmare. There's Walter Bowler, a violent bike thief looking to move on to better (or preferably worse) things. There's the dope dealer and family man, Bill. There's a cockney half wit called Dean Martin (who must nevertheless be treated with respect because of his ultra-hard cousin, Neville). And then there's the youngest of the four, a light-fingered youth with a morbid fear of trains. When they're asked to steal four strange-looking chairs from a museum in the North York Moors, something - everything - is bound to go pear-shaped.

The Bobby Dazzlers follows their stumbling progress in a funny, macabre thriller about jealousy, drugs, media-friendly Yorkshiremen, salmon fishing, modernist chair design and gruesome death (both accidental and pre-meditated), all set against a backdrop of beautiful Georgian architecture and some of England's finest countryside.