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Layer Cake

By: J.J. Connolly

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Paperback | 4 August 2026

At a Glance

Paperback
352 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
19.8 x 12.9 x 2.8

Paperback

RRP $24.99

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The bestselling, gripping crime novel publishing in a must-have 20th anniversary edition – featuring new content by the author.

Layer cake (n): a metaphor for the murky layers of the criminal world.

Smooth-talking drug dealer X has a plan to quietly bankroll enough cash to retire before his thirtieth birthday. Operating under the polished veneer of a legitimate businessman, his mantra is to keep a low profile and run a tight operation until it's time to get out .

When kingpin Jimmy Price asks him to find the wayward daughter of a wealthy socialite who's been running around with a cokehead, he accepts the job with the promise that after this he can leave the criminal world behind with Jimmy's blessing. Oh, and he needs to find a buyer for two million ecstasy pills acquired by a crew of lowly, loud-mouth gangsters, the Yahoos. Simple enough, until an assassin named Klaus arrives to scratch him off his list, revealing this job is much more than it seems at first.

From the glitz of the London club scene of the 1990's to the underbelly of its criminal world, Layer Cake is the best in British crime fiction.

'A storming piece of work.'
- D. J. Taylor

'Fast and funny and just frightening enough to make you sit up all night finishing the book.'
- Independent on Sunday

About the Author

J.J. Connolly was raised and still lives in north-east London. He is the author of acclaimed bestseller Layer Cake, which he adapted into a blockbuster film for Sony Pictures and director Matthew Vaughn. He has since been working with Jason Statham on the TV adaptation of the sequel Viva la Madness, optioned by Sky TV.

Industry Reviews

'This assured debut is far more sophisticated than such expressions of "gangster chic" as Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. Connolly displays the same infectious relish for underworld argot as Elizabethan writers fascinated by rogues' cant, and his ostensibly artless plotting is as rich in double and triple crosses as a spy thriller' John Dugdale, The Sunday Times

'The best crime novel I've ever read' Bruce Reynolds

'An immensely entertaining read' Philip MacCann, The Spectator

'If the brilliantly written and intriguing Layer Cake is anything to go by, his will soon be a name to whet the appetites of readers and critics alike' Francis Gilbert, The Times

'Funny, hectic, hard-hitting debut novel... Tart, tough and riveted at every juncture by unmistakable authenticity... sheer, unstoppable joy to read from the first page to the last' Philip Oakes, Literary Review

'A storming piece of work... the novel has a grasp of street argot unparalleled since Kinky Friedman first sashayed out of his from door and nailed a checker straight out of the bat' D. J. Taylor

'Connolly's style is fast and funny and just frightening enough to make you sit up all night finishing the book' Independent on Sunday

'One novel in and Connolly has hit the jackpot, jump-started British crime fiction into the present... Like good drug fiction you're given glamour and squalor, a voyeuristic thrill, and the bill' Uncut

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