Nineteen seventy-seven

David Peace's debut, Nineteen Seventy Four, showed his extraordinary ability to create characters. Nineteen Seventy Seven's, heroes - the half-way decent copper Bob Fraser and the burnt-out hack Jack Whitehead - would be considered villains in most people's books. Fraser and Whitehead have one thing in common though - they're both desperate men dangerously in love with Chapeltown whores. And as the summer moves remorselessly towards the bonfires of Jubilee Night, the killings accelerate and it seems as if Fraser and Whitehead are the only men who suspect or care that there may be more than one killer at large.