Sice

When the pop group The Boo Radleys split up in 1999 after ten years of international fame and success their lead singer, Sice, retired to the country to be a house-husband and novelist. The first product of that new career is the novel THIMBLERIGGER, a huge, sweeping saga set in the criminal underworld of Victorian Liverpool. When Sam, a novelist with writer’s block, is visiting his prematurely born son in hospital he encounters a man called Lockton Leather who claims to be 150 years old. It seems clear that Leather is either a senile fantasist or a calculated liar, but something about his story compels Sam to listen in the hope of learning the truth - and he just might get a novel out of it. This is an extraordinary first novel about lies, crime and revenge, love, friendship and loss, fear, betrayal and redemption. It creates a world that is rich and strange, distant yet familiar.