Aesop is 14. His knowledge of crime is limited to drug-taking and car-theft; his knowledge of sex is what he observes his friends doing. But when Ludwig James knocks him over, Aesop enters a world where the law is broken on a far grander scale.

          Monomaniacal millionaire Mack; the diseased, obsessive and violently fond Ludwig; tenderly exploitable Aesop; Dr Achilles, Ludwig’s emotionally clinical dermatologist who collects human specimens from among the dispossessed, and Douglas, the one-legged chauffeur who drives, murders and loves his wife with equal dedication–these are the gently ironic characters out of whose emotional topography Sarah May shapes the landscape of her first novel.

          “This is the kind of book you’ll want to read slowly, savouring the finer points of observation, pausing to reflect upon what familiar to you … the best book I have read in years ……” – Time Out.