Futures
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Carol is a small-time cocaine dealer in 1987 London. She’s on her own with a young daughter, a good mother who is especially careful in her working life. For some punters, this involves being Simone. One of these customers is Phil, a financial analyst in the City who, with his longtime pal and fellow analyst Jack, fantasizes a cocaine futures market while on a coke binge. They look at it as they would look at any other commodity.
At the top of the wholesale business are Gordon Murray and his brothers, who have an “in” with the Drug Squad and are prepared to shop anyone to keep it that way, on top of the violence they use as and when needed.
When the cocaine futures market becomes a reality, Carol has an opportunity to go for the big deal that could get her out of the business altogether. Meanwhile, a stock market crash creates havoc, and a once-in-a lifetime hurricane sweeps across London, ripping down trees and the communication systems of the stock market itself. Carol must make her choice, as three very different worlds are about to collide.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Barker (Bending the Bars, a memoir of his time in prison) ventures into fiction with this acerbic look at Thatcher's Britain. In 1987 London, posh stock traders mix comfortably with polished criminals, and cocaine fuels already out-of-control self-confidence. The profit potential of a grand drug deal is irresistible, particularly with the advent of the cocaine futures market. Single mother Carol Curbishley, a minor drug dealer attracted to the riches of a life of crime, is pulled into the middle of one such deal, despite her fear of the consequences it may have on her and her nine-year-old daughter, Sheila, if she's caught. Carol faces some difficult choices when the stock market crashes and a hurricane hits London. Some unconventional punctuation diminishes readability, but Barker's characters ring true and his story is an enthralling portrait of an era whose legacy still haunts us.
