The Crime Studio

'Savage talked about his life as a re-offender. How could someone be offended by the same thing twice? Was nothing learnt?'Beerlight, the city of all of our futures, is not a safe place. Weaponry, rather than fast cars or designer clothes, is the ultimate status symbol. The populace is dedicated to law-breaking, politically incorrect views and hurling abuse and hand grenades at each other.Combining elements of surrealism, film noir and punk rock ethos, Aylett creates a darkly comic landscape that's a cross between a Tarantino film and a Bosch painting, where murder is the ultimate expression of art.The cast of hoodlums includes burglar extraordinaire Billy Panacea, conman-cum-lawyer Harpoon Specter and other fun-loving felons who hang out at the Delayed Reaction Bar on Valentine Street reading the Parole Violators Bugle.'Very funny and eminently readable'Interzone'Make no mistake, Aylett knows his stuff'i-D'Hilarious and horrifying dismemberment of the urban hardboiled style. Beerlight is a scary suburb located at the exact mid-point between then and now, between Mare Street and Main Street, where no-goods, no-hopers and ne'er-do-wells do not hesitate to pump each other full of holes or drugs. Practitioners of street mime are subject to particularly gruesome atrocitites. Comic-book imagery – like Jim Steranko on steroids – mingles with a noiriste's worst nightmare in this distressingly brilliant debut'The Guardian