Beast of Burden

The fourth novel in Ray Banks's highly acclaimed Cal Innes series. The biggest race riot in Manchester's history and a close relative's death have left Cal Innes a physical and emotional wreck. He's about to leave his newly established private detective agency to partner Frank Collier when the word comes through that his erstwhile nemesis Mo Tiernan has gone missing. Innes is the only one Mo's ganglord father trusts to investigate, but he's not the only one working the case ? Detective Sergeant 'Donkey' Donkin has a vested interest in both the Tiernans and Innes, and he'd sacrifice his career to see them all behind bars. After all, he has a score to settle...And he's not the only one. PRAISE FOR RAY BANKS'S CAL INNES NOVELS Ray Banks writes with harshness, humour and elegance, and his punchy dialogue teems with vigorous authenticity. ? The Times Tough and assured . . . Banks is updating the noir novel with an utterly original sensibility. - Publisher's Weekly Bleakly, desperately funny, Ray Banks offers us a glimpse of what Samuel Beckett might have read like had he turned his hand to crime fiction. - Crime Always Pays Ray BanksOCOs writing is a dark delight, and 'Saturday's Child' is like blunt surgery from a cricket bat. Fast, hard, packed with madcap violence and twisted humor, itOCOs a bone-jarring ride through EnglandOCOs bleak underbelly. - Patrick Quinlan, author of Smoked 'Saturday's Child' is a knock-out, written with the kind of energy and passion that far too few writers can muster. Fresh and fierce, it raises the bar for hardboiled fiction on both sides of the Atlantic. - New York Times Bestseller Laura Lippman, author of What The Dead Know 'Saturday's Child' is fascinating, fresh and darkly funny. It will be an exotic entertainment for American readers of hard-boiled detective fiction. - Thomas Perry, author of Nightlife Banks wields language with a knifefighter's precision, with much the same result. From the first words to the last, this book flashes brilliantly. - Don Winslow, The Power Of The Dog and The Winter of Frankie Machine. Banks is part of the post-Rankin generation for whom hardboiled is not just a state of mind but a reality. Tough-guy colloquial prose and a pace fast enough to skin a rabbit, at the service of a tale of down-and-dirty realism: this is fiery stuff. - Maxim Jakubowski, The Guardian The writing's so urgent, so brutal, and just so obscenely real that it creates a whole new kind of 'dark' for a genre that's become a trifle stagnated in recent years. Hence this is a book anyone who's fallen out of love with the genre in these recent times, where the old quality has been severely lacking, simply needs to read. - Chris Pickering, Bookmunch ...terrific, brooding and chilling prose -Tom Adair, The Scotsman ...a fine example of energetic, visceral and compelling storytelling... This is properly thrilling stuff. - The Big Issue In Scotland"