Gus Dury is down on his luck and looking for distraction when Danny Murray asks him to find his old school friend, Barry Fulton. Fresh from jail, and attracting the attention of a new breed of Irish gangster, Barry is treading a fine line between his past and the activities of present-day Edinburgh crimelord, Boaby ‘Shakey’ Stevens.
Dury knows Barry has put a time-bomb round his neck and if he can’t defuse the situation the consequences for his old friend don’t bear thinking about. As the clock ticks Dury finds himself sliding the Long Way Down a winding spiral of tension and despair as he tries to save Barry from his own impending destruction at the hands of those who know brutality as a way of life.
Long Way Down is a 14,000-word novella from the author of the Random House UK Gus Dury series: Paying for It, Gutted, Loss, and Long Time Dead.
Praise for Long Way Down:
‘Black’s Gus Dury novels revelled in their hardcore authenticity and
this novella is both an update and a reminder of Dury’s intoxicating
brilliance.’
-Daily Record
‘Tony Black is the latest of the seemingly unending stream of good Scottish
crime writers who have in common the ability to portray vividly the
underbelly of Scottish inner-city criminality … The dialogue fizzes
and the whole is suffused with black humour’
-The Times
‘Tony Black’s first novel hits the ground running, combining a sympathetic
ear for the surreal dialogue of the dispossessed with a portrait of the
belly of a city painted in the blackest of humour’
-The Guardian
‘If you’re a fan of the Ian Rankins, Denise Minas and Irvine Welshes of this
-The Scotsman
‘Ripping, gutsy prose and a witty wreck of a protaganist makes this another
exceptionally compelling, bright and even original thriller’
-Daily Mirror
‘Tony Black is my favourite British crime writer and Gus Dury the genre’s
most interesting protagonist. Like his previous books, Loss has the
power, style and street swagger that makes most of his contemporaries a
little bland by comparison’
-Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting
‘Tony Black has written two of the finest crime novels to come out of the UK
in the past twenty years and I’m willing to bet that in twenty years,
Paying for It and Gutted will be in the top ten of any crime list. But
now comes Loss … Phew-oh … It’s like having yer ass kicked and yer
heart shrived simultaneously. What a privilege to watch a master writer
achieve everything you’d hoped for and then some’
-Ken Bruen, author of London Boulevard
