In hardboiled crime novels such as this one, the reader can expect to find plenty of people being beaten up and even killed, but in this novel, did you have trouble believing so many bad things could happen in such a short time? What was your personal reaction to this, and what do you think was the author's intention in creating so many scenes of violence?

The author takes a serious risk in using Royston Blake, a thoroughly bad character, as the story's narrator and its protagonist. Discuss how you think Charlie Williams went about trying to make Blake an engaging fellow for the reader, even though he's a criminal, and whether you think that effort was successful.

When Legs admits to Blake that he told the Munton brothers about the murder of Baz Munton, Legs says the reason he did it was because...