These stories are not for the faint-hearted. There's sex and drugs and crime, the underbelly of society. Gerrard tells his stories straight and terse, with prose as taut as junkie's arm strap, as tight as a meth-head's clenched teeth. His characters are chancers and bikers and thieves, dealers, pimps and prostitutes. Geographically these stories roam from Portugal to Paris, from South Africa to Mozambique, from central Europe to England, but no matter where they are set there is a common gritty landscape of bars and urban wastelands, backstreets and squalid housing. If you're looking for a raw and unflinching account of the lives of tough people in even tougher situations then this book is right up your broken-bottle condom-strewn dark alley. Gerrard is in control of his characters and settings right from the outset to the final line.