"An ill-educated, thuggish pub doorman
who has never stepped outside his one-horse West Country
town (no one ever leaves Mangel!) is not an obvious
narrator for a literary novel, but in Royston Blake,
Charlie Williams has come up trumps. Not that Blake is a
bloke you would want to have much to do with, mind. He
has a tendency to get into fights, see a fog descend
before his eyes and come to some time later realising
that he's killed someone - again. For "deadfolk" litter
the streets of Mangel before the story is out, and Blake
gets deeper and deeper into trouble as he tries to cover
his tracks in this heartily original noirish debut,
related in a rich West Country vernacular. It all starts
with rumours that the notorious Munton family, with
their ominously named Meat Wagon ("I'd rather be knifed
in the guts than put in there"), are after Blake - and
that he's "lost his bottle". The indignant Blake sets
out on a hilarious misbegotten mission to save his
reputation and establish ownership of Hoppers Wine Bar
and Bistro, while bedding as many women as possible
along the way. He makes the insipid heroes of lad lit
look like a bunch of big girls' blouses. The more
politically correct among you can read this as social
comment, the rest can just enjoy the ride."
-
Rachel Hore, The Guardian
"What a brilliant sustained piece of
work. I knew from the opening riff on the kebab that I
was in business. Everything I love and so rarely get is
there - dementia, out loud hilarity, characters to die
for and I swear I used to drink with"
- Ken
Bruen
"Blakey is the hulking bruiser at the
centre of Williams' astounding debut. Written in a sort
of once-upon-a-time-in-the-West-Country vernacular, it
describes a few days in the life of nightclub bouncer
and bottler-in-denial Blake. Despite the assortment of
scum, scrubber, and socipaths he swims with, Blake comes
across as a real anti-hero for our times, a
lager-fuelled out with no good points worth mentioning.
Although it appears a simple tale of country bumpkins
with chainsaws, the plot unfolds in deliciously
vindictive detail, the reasons for hard man Blakey's
fall from grace clearer with every chapter. Williams's
eye for criminal vulnerability never stops roving, from
the monkey wrench stowed in Blake's "leather" to the
faulty power steering on his ancient Ford Capri.
Deadfolk is horribly funny - the "press" reports had me
in stitches - but it is definitely not for the
faint-hearted. I can't wait for the next
installment"
- Simon Harding, Western Daily
Press
"Plenty of memorably grim
moments"
- Wayne Burrows, The Big
Issue
"A mini masterpiece... A murderous
adventure full of colourful and seriously deranged
characters"
- Tony Larner, Birmingham Sunday
Mercury
Highly entertaining debut... Williams
shines at painting a portrait of a ghost town barely
hanging on, mired in ordinariness but full of life
nonetheless. And the black humor is a constant here,
ensuring that the story never becomes depressing or
bleak. Deadfolk is an idiosyncratic and fresh crime
novel that establishes Williams as an author to watch.
Mangel may be a town that its citizens cannot escape,
but the vitality and edginess of this debut will eagerly
bind readers to the prospect of future
installments"
- Sarah Weinman, January
Magazine
"Hilarious, perfectly paced, filled
with intriguing characters, and held together by a great
plot"
- Allan Guthrie, Waterstones Books
Quarterly
"Royston Blake, Head Doorman at
Hopper’s Wine Bar & Bistro, somewhere in London’s
West Country, wouldn’t know a bright idea “if it did a
shite in my pocket.” Which is exactly why I like him,
and why this comic noir from cult favorite Williams
makes such perfect sense in a world where the shite is
everywhere but in your pocket"
- Bill Ott,
Booklist
"Writing in a pitch-perfect voice,
with a cast of lovable losers and lowlifes we’ve never
seen before, Charlie Williams has created a stunningly
original noir world of his own. Demented, hilarious, and
near impossible to put down, Deadfolk may be the closest
thing to the Jim Thompson style of crime novel Britain
has ever created"
- Jason Starr
"Carnage, chaos, and a chainsaw called
Susan add to this remarkable debut, which marks the
appearance of a totally new voice in British
fiction"
- Grab, Buzz Magazine
"Putting the narrative in the hands of
a monosyllabic thug may not seem the wisest course for a
young writer on his first novel. But Williams carries it
off brilliantly. Blake's bleakly comic narration
perfectly mirrors his basic take on life, whilst at the
same time laying bare the often chilling logic of his
pathology. The dialogue too, cleverly regionally
unspecific, is spot on. The pace is swift, the plot well
thought out, even a shade Hitchcockian here and there (a
'doofer' is crucial to later developments). It's a gory
story of course, at times shockingly violent (a chainsaw
called Susan makes a memorable appearance), one of
assertive masculinity at its most basic and brutal.
Williams's final masterstroke is the setting he creates
for Blake, his birds and his mates. Mangel (was ever a
place so appropriately named?) with its districts of
Norbert Green, Muckfield and East Bloater is something
like the tenth circle of hell for, as everyone knows,
'no-one leaves Mangel'. Indeed as the latter litany is
repeated, time and again, the place, whilst never losing
its uncomfortable resemblance to that benighted
community not far from where you (and I) live, begins to
take on an almost mystical significance. It's another
reason why I look forward to the next book in what
Charlie Williams has described as a trilogy. A noir
trilogy, surely a contradiction in terms? Not, I
suspect, when it's set in Mangel"
- Bob Cornwell,
Tangled Web
"Williams writes with genuine finesse
and a streak of black humour a mile wide... Deadfolk
grows deeper and funnier with repeated reading"
-
Ray Banks, Noir Originals
"It's hard to believe the brutal
images that escalate before your very eyes... and you're
left wanting more"
- David Chapman, Worcester
Evening News
"Excellent debut... The whole set-up
of Mangel gives a feeling of nightmare familiarity of
small country towns, yet the odd street names, East
Bloater Road for instance, conjure up a parallel
universe or a comic book unreality. The chatty style,
tongue-in-cheek humour and the non-specific dialect
allow for a crime novel that has its own voice, doesn’t
follow a tradition and isn’t trying to be literarily
pretentious. But where Williams really triumphs is in
the portrayal of Royston. Here is a man who should be
universally loathed; he is violent, small-minded, vain,
cold and indifferent, yet when he loses his power — his
'hardness' — and the town starts to see him as weak, I
found myself actually feeling a bit sympathetic for the
bastard. Recommended summer reading for those who have
escaped or want to escape from a small town, or those
living in the big city who mistakenly think that there
is a quiet life out there in the country"
- MJ
Smout, Barcelona Review
"It’s a scary mirror Charlie Williams
holds up to life in rural England, though it’s scary in
the best way of crime novels, a distorted fairground
sort of mirror of a very English and contemporary
kind"
- Carrie McMillan, Tangents
"A riotous yet horrifying trip... a
completely original work, well-plotted, great dialogue,
fast paced with touches of tenderness edging around the
dark center."
- Maddy Van Hertbruggen, I Love a
Mystery
"Imagine, if you will, the
comparatively genteel Midsomer Murders transplanted to
darkest Somerset and given a delight in excess worthy of
Tarantino, the whole dripping with pitch black comedy
and panache. Oh, and then tell it in a West Country
vernacular. It is the first person narrative that makes
the book, drawing the reader in from the get go and,
while never becoming someone we might actually like,
Royston Blake is a beautifully realised character,
someone who is totally believable on his own terms and
whose fight to rise above the obstacles that confront
him we can identify with, even feel a twinge of empathy
as the shit keeps on coming, most of it really not his
fault... Overall this is a compelling and highly
enjoyable, albeit not for the squeamish, debut from
writer Charlie Williams, who delivers a tour de force
exercise in narrative voice and sets those mean streets
along which a man must walk in a refreshingly different
locale."
- Peter Tennant, The Third
Alternative
"If you value a strong voice, keen
sense of place, and fully fleshed-out characters, then
DEADFOLK by Charlie Williams is for you. Go buy it right
now. A strong debut sure to attract devoted fans... The
real triumph of DEADFOLK is Royston Blake himself, a
thug not quite aware of his own limitations. We feel for
him, flinch on his behalf as he continues to endure bad
luck and make poor decisions. I was impressed by this
novel, and look forward to Williams' next book FAGS
& LAGER."
- Victor Gischler, Crime
Spree
"Fantastically charged and ludicrously
violent debut... Brutally violent, brutally funny and as
powerful a whack across the swede when you’re standing
at the bar on a Saturday night, Deadfolk is highly
recommended"
- Russel McLean, Crime
Scene
"There is a dark heart to England, a
claustrophobic core of oddity and violence. Deadfolk
comes straight from this English heart, and even through
all of its offbeat humour, there is no mistaking that
Charlie Williams is a writer who has something to
say"
- Nicholas Blincoe
