The Long Firm - Jake Arnott

The Long Firm, published in 1999, was Jake Arnott's stunning début novel. The central character is Harry Starks, a 1960s gang leader whose story is told by five people who dealt with him over the years. As he's happy to use murder, torture, and blackmail, most of them regret it, but others are liberated. You probably wouldn't want to meet him, but you'll most likely enjoy reading about him. That's thanks to his somewhat warped sense of justice and his glamour, which attracts celebrities slumming up to gangsters like him, in turn desperate for the respectability they hope it will bring.

It's on the Big Gay Read list because, as Starks says, "I'm homosexual but I'm not gay" – he's a huge fan of Judy Garland, but unable to have a loving relationship with anyone except his mum. The atmosphere of the 1960s before the partial decriminalisation of male homosexual acts in England and Wales (Scotland took until 1981) is vividly portrayed, and the outsider status of homosexuality is shared by villain, 'rent boy' and Lord alike.

Starks appears as a minor character in Arnott's next two books, 'He Kills Coopers' and 'Truecrime', but this is the one to read. [Ian Watters]