Double Kiss is the 2nd book in the series with Framed being the first. This was just as enjoyable as the first book, highly recommend to anyone who has read Framed to continue with the series.

Unfortunately this book was archived before I could read it.

Well, this was unexpected… Double Kiss by snooker legend Ronnie O’Sullivan may well be one of the best commercial crime novels I’ve read this year! It is original, page turning with well developed characters and a good sense of setting, and is also written with more nuance than you might expect.

It’s 1996 and Frankie James is a young man in his twenties who owns a snooker club (obvs) in the heart of Soho. His parents are absent – Dad’s in prison and mother fled many years before – so Frankie has been left to manage himself, the club, and to keep an eye on his younger brother who is always in and out of trouble. And that’s hard to do when you live and work in Soho, though Frankie does his best to keep the gangsters around him at arm’s distance, as well as the corrupt police. But sometimes that isn’t always possible…

In Framed, the previous book where we first introduced to Frankie and this world, Frankie had to cut a deal with big local gangsters to keep his brother from prison, and in Double Kiss, the gangsters are calling in that favour. One of Frankie’s old school friends, Tanya, happens to the niece of one of Soho’s biggest mobsters and she has gone missing in Ibiza. That gangster wants Frankie to go and find her and bring her back.

But what seems a relatively safe, if complicated, request, turns out to be anything but when Frankie finds himself caught up in intergang warfare and huge criminal undertakings. Suddenly, he is a young man out of his league and in a whole lot of trouble…

I read Framed last year when it was published, and I did find it quite frustrating – so much potential in a crime book loosely set on Ronnie O’Sullivan’s life and personality (there’s plenty of material in both!) and I was excited for a crime novel set in Soho in the Nineties, an extraordinary microcosm in the middle of London with its own rules and characters, which I felt hadn’t been properly explored as a setting before – but there were issues in that one. Well, one book on and so many of those issues have fallen away.

Frankie James is now a far more complicated character. His jack-the-lad exterior has been partnered with a heart that falls in love too easily and, here, his weakness for drinks and drugs has a clear impact on the book’s plot and his ability to execute what he is required to do. The impact of the absence of his parents is also more noted.

And there are improvements elsewhere too. The gangsters of Soho are fewer but far more well-defined. There’s real life in these characters (and I have a terrible sense they may well be based on men Ronnie has met before!) but they are believable. There’s a big plus in the addition of gay characters where their sexuality is just a given and not a plot point, and the various love interests in the book are more than just pretty faces and, at times, there’s an interesting switch in power play between themselves and Frankie.

So, lots to recommend about here. Yes, I know Ronnie was assisted with the writing of this book by Emlyn Rees but, nevertheless, this is an impressive achievement, especially considering this is a celebrity-penned novel.

Double Kiss is the second book in the trilogy, Soho Nights, so, ideally, you will have read Framed before reading this. However, it is possible to read this as a stand-alone story. There are long-running plots that clearly run across the two (soon to be three) books around the incarceration of Frankie James’s dad and his absent mother but these are pretty easy to pick up if you read Double Kiss first.

But, whichever way you cut it, Double Kiss is one of the finest commercial crime novels this year. And who would have expected that?! Impressive.

This is the second book in this series and I have not read the first book and I am not sure I want to

Frankies back and doing well, he's making money by showing football matches in his club. He receives a postcard from his mum who abandoned him.

Meanwhile Tommy Riley a gangster, his niece goes missing and he wants Frank to find her.
Frank has made a fresh start and this will put him back into a world where he does not want to be associated.

So Frank goes looking for Tommy's niece and it turns out that the postcard from his mum are nearby. So he has to use all his wits to stay alive

Its an okay book but I struggled to read it. Maybe you need to read the first one.

I read this pretty much straight after Framed, the first in series. One thing I did notice between the two books is that this one is a lot lighter on the language so if that did put you off reading on with this series then maybe this information will put your mind at rest. If you haven't yet read Framed and can stomach a bit of bad language then I would recommend reading that first, normal series rules re character background and development applying.
So, Frankie is ticking along quite nicely these days. The club is doing well, assisted by England also doing well in the football, thus helping his takings when showing matches. All this well being is thrown into disarray when he receives a postcard that he thinks might be from his mother. The mother who abandoned the family years ago. Then he gets another spanner thrown his way, the favour that was done for him in book one needs repaid. Gang lord Tommy Riley's niece has gone missing, presumed run away and Tommy wants Frankie to go find her and bring her back. Problem is, Frankie has worked hard to escape that world. But then he has no choice. Fortunately, word on the street is that the place the niece is rumoured to be in is not a million miles away from where the postcard came from. Can Frankie kill two birds with one stone? And more importantly, stay alive whilst trying to do it?
Well, I raced through this book just like I did the first. The couple of misgivings I had left over from Framed were addressed very well in this sequel. The language has already been mentioned and the other thing is the level of Frankie's actions and expertise. I found him to be a much more credible character in this book. Other characters are also equally well described, again, more than for Framed as the author relies less on the language element to define them and so has to find other ways to get their demeanours across.
Plotting was also well worked out, especially the story of Frankie's mother. I won't go into any more detail here as it would include spoilers. The other main story regarding the missing niece was also credible but, to me, was secondary. I think the reasoning behind this was that I was able to connect better emotionally with the mother story.
These two main story lines were complete within this book to my satisfaction, but there were a few loose threads left at the end that are obviously going to be picked up in book three and beyond. Not cliffhangers I hasted to add and nothing to feel cheated over. Just a few things that you know aren't quite resolved... yet. Personally I am really looking forward to book three and finding out.
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.