This superb coming-of-age novel contains echoes of Ian Cross's The God Boy. Both novels look at the world and family relationships through the eyes of a young boy on the brink of adolescence. . Davey Ardsley is twelve years old, growing up in a working-class suburb of Christchurch in the early 1970s (Norman Kirk has just died) with a big, violent, hard-case father and a long-suffering mother. The fridge is always full of beer; his mother is always lighting another fag to have with her cup of tea. Davey is a bit of a hard-case himself, giving his father and Terry Appleby, the local thug, plenty of lip. . One day Davey witnesses something he shouldn't have and the repercussions that follow pitch the Ardsleys down a dark and tragic road. The outcome is that Davey has to choose between loyalty to his father or telling the truth.