Trouble Man

Henry Bane #3

by Tom Benn

Tom Benn does for low-life Manchester what Trainspotting did for Edinburgh in a seamy, violent, yet soulful crime story It's Manchester, at the close of the millennium, and Henry Bane is now manager of an exclusive nightclub. He has a beautiful mistress, a teenage son, and is making moves in a violent underworld to which he is increasingly numbed. When a young girl is found tortured and unwilling to go to the police, Bane offers to help, and finds horror in a feral community with a respectable veneer. But, by meddling, he ends up endangering those he wants to protect. Not only that, he also manages to incur the wrath of an ailing ganglord, and soon finds himself tangled in a penthouse robbery and an underground boxing match. From the casual sexism of Bane's clubland, to the savage misogyny of a killer targeting the young and dispossessed, Bane is taken through a hell, perhaps of his own making, where he is pushed to his limit—and the trouble only gets closer to home. Tom Benn has created a teeming underworld of extraordinary criminals, victims, and possible heroes—all with their own brilliantly rendered vernacular—and a noir backdrop of rain, city streets, sharp diagonals of light, and very long shadows.

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 9, 2014

About the author

Tom Benn is an award-winning author, screenwriter and Associate Professor from Stockport, England. His latest novel, OXBLOOD (Bloomsbury), was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, the CWA Gold Dagger, and in 2023 won the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award. His first novel, THE DOLL PRINCESS (Cape), was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Portico Prize, and longlisted for the CWA’s John Creasey Dagger. His other novels are CHAMBER MUSIC (Cape) and TROUBLE MAN (Cape). He won runner-up prize in the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize, and his essays and fiction have appeared in Granta and the Paris Review. He won the BFI’s iWrite scheme for emerging screenwriters. His first film, 'Real Gods Require Blood', premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Short Film at the BFI London Film Festival.