Back Door to Hell
Every plan has a price…
Back Door to Hell is a pulsating noir thriller published by Fahrenheit 13. It tells the story of 22-year-old south-Londoner Nate Stokes, who is struggling to find his feet in recession-hit Britain.
While putting in a month’s free shifts at a dingy snooker club to work off a debt owed to local underworld boss Crawford, Nate meets 19-year-old art student Jen Whittaker, who works part-time at the club.
After seeing her take a keen interest in the business dealings of Dom, the grubby club manager, Nate and Jen get talking. She tells him about Dom and Crawford’s routine for using the premises to conduct monthly stocktakes of cash collected from – and in some cases laundered through – Crawford’s various businesses across south London, which include a string of high-end wine shops, beauty salons, nightclubs and cafes.
She asks him for help in raiding the next stocktake, offering to split the six-figure stash 50-50.
Nate is wary, realising that getting away with it will mean having to leave south London, where his father and brother live. But the temptation of starting afresh with serious money and ditching the stale, aimless life that has engulfed him over recent years – together with impressing the attractive and ambitious Jen – proves too much.
They set their plan in motion, sparking a cat-and-mouse chase up and down the country that changes Nate and Jen’s lives forever.
Exploring themes of youthful hope and solidarity in the midst of a gloomy economy, burgeoning yet tentative love, destiny and despair, Back Door to Hell is a razor-sharp slice of contemporary noir.
It was released in January 2019 in paperback and ebook formats. You can order or download it direct from the publisher here. It is also available on Amazon Kindle here and the paperback version here.
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