The Damage

The sequel to The Drop, more brutal, gritty crime fiction, as David Blake struggles to keep together the crime empire he's worked so hard to build

There's a thought that keeps me awake at night; I have to be lucky every time, they only have to get lucky once.

David Blake is a worried man. He should be enjoying the high life now that he is Newcastle's "Top Boy," the man who controls everything in the city that's worth controlling. He lives in exiled luxury, while his brother Danny and trusted right-hand men, Palmer and Kinane, take care of business. The money keeps on rolling in and Blake is sharing his life with the girl that he loves, Sarah Mahoney - shame he had to murder her father to save his own skin but she doesn't know anything about that. Blake never wanted to be boss but no one else is savvy enough to deal with all of the firm's problems: the rogue drug dealer keeping too much of the take, or "The Turk," Blake's new source of "product" who's taken a million Euros as a down payment on a shipment that never arrives. Newly crowned Glasgow crime lord Alan Gladwell wants to do business with the firm, and the deal makes sense but can Blake trust the man whose brother he brutally murdered? Then there is his obsession with the beautiful but troubled Simone, who chooses to work in one of the firm's massage parlors when she is so much better than that. When one of his men takes two bullets in the back and someone tries to kill him, Blake struggles to stay in control. From the heroin-laced high rises of Newcastle to the seedy back streets of Bangkok, in a world of contract killers, corrupt politicians, bent detectives, coke-snorting footballers, fixers, hookers, and pimps, Blake is in a race against time to find his potential assassin and discover the truth.