Among Thieves    1. Among Thieves   2. by Mez Packer  Coventry
1983. As the city skanks to the 2 Tone beat, so another
multicultural youth enterprise gets under way, uniting wildly
divergent characters looking to smash the system and get rich
quick on the music's narcotic spur: hashish. Goggle-eyed Jez,
with his hard nut dad and NF-supporting brother, is an unlikely
enough a comrade for rude boy Basil, let alone the two student
entrepreneurs they are working for - upper-class Andy and Pads.
But for a while, the good times roll. Until Andy and Pads have a
mysterious falling out and Andy goes it alone disastrously,
running scams for some sinister Irishmen, who turn their deals
back on him, leaving a £25,000 mark on his head, a sack of fake
dollars and a month to pay back his debts. In her highly
original debut, Packer weaves in these wonky wide boys to a
subplot about a brooding Albanian, who will eventually provide
the crackerjack ending, and sends them on an often comical,
sometimes profound journey across co