A Ruined Boy

A mother and son with a pathological hatred of each other… A ferocious crime lord with a penchant for young boys… An outwardly-respectable, middle-class couple with a shocking secret… A diminutive movie star steeped in depravity...

Set against a background of Hollywood and the Mafia in the fifties, this novel, wildly funny in places, shockingly violent in others, centres on Honey and Sonny Bunn, a mother and son who whose hatred of each other is out of control.

Honey is a nightclub entertainer, coarse, bloated and sexually rampant; and Sonny a manipulative young psychopath, dazzlingly beautiful and corrupt.

Surrounding these two central figures is a host of marvellously realised characters – Sylvano Mastrioni, a ruthless crime lord with a penchant for young boys; Thomas Calvino, Honey’s sadistic Mafioso lover; Tiny Templar, a diminutive movie star steeped in depravity; Harry Finn, a self-pitying comic unable to come to terms with his wife’s horrific suicide; Jessica and Henry Lansbury, pillars of the community with a terrible secret.

Set against a backdrop of Hollywood and the Mafia in the fifties, this is a bawdy, blackly comic novel about lust, hate, greed and revenge.