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Soho Nights #2
Double Kiss (2)
The race is on. The stakes are high.Frankie James thought his troubles were behind him. He’s busy running his Soho Club, and his brother’s finally out of prison. But when a postcard arrives from Mallorca, he’s stopped in his tracks . . . Is it from his mother – the woman who’s been missing for eight years?When the goddaughter of London’s fiercest gangster, Tommy Riley, goes missing in Ibiza, Tommy knows there’s one man for the job – Frankie James. Just when Frankie was on the straight and narrow, he’s now faced with an impossible choice. If he agrees to help find Tanya, he’ll be thrown into a world of danger. If he doesn’t, Tommy could destroy him.For Frankie James, old habits die hard. One thing’s for sure, playing with this gang is no game. But with everything at stake, how can Frankie say no?Double-Kiss is the fast-paced, thrilling sequel to Framed, by snooker champion Ronnie O’Sullivan
352 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2018
18 people are currently reading
153 people want to read
About the author
Ronnie O'Sullivan
12 books142 followersRonnie O'Sullivan is widely regarded as the most gifted snooker player ever. In May 2012 he won the World Championship and announced his retirement. He then returned in May 2013, having not played for a year, to win the World Championship for a fifth time.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
November 29, 2017
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.
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.
May 8, 2018
I must admit when I spotted this in the library I didn't have much faith that Ronnie had written it himself. But having read it I'm ready to give him the credit. It's OK, a bit rough around the edges maybe. Really frustrating ending!
May 28, 2021
This book is written by Ronnie O’Sullivan, as in the snooker player. He’s arguably the greatest snooker player who ever lived, but what’s he like as a writer? Well it’s entirely possible that I still don’t know, because I’m not sure whether this was ghostwritten or not. He reckons that he isn’t, but whether that’s true or not is anyone’s guess.
It’s also the second book in a series, following on from the first one, which is called Framed. They’re basically contemporary crime novels that follow a guy who runs a snooker hall, which I guess is pretty much obligatory so that they can tie the stories back to Ronnie O’Sullivan and piggy back on his fame.
The first book was just okay, which to be honest was good enough for me, but then the second one takes forever to get started. In Framed, we’re thrown right in at the deep end and the story just picks up straight away. In this one, we have to wait 150 pages or so before anything really happens, which I wouldn’t mind if I was invested in the characters – but I wasn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad book, and I’d be just fine with it if it had come from an indie writer with no budget behind them. As it is though, it has the might of Pan Macmillan behind it, and I would have expected them to have done a better job of editing it. There are some pretty basic errors here, including a bunch of typos that made it feel pretty basic.
Overall then, it was kind of a disappointment, but not too much because it wasn’t as though I’d been expecting it to blow my mind. It just was what it was, a pretty bog standard celebrity book that I’ll forget pretty quickly, and that’s coming from someone who’s a Ronnie O’Sullivan fan. Even if you’re super into crime novels, I don’t think I could recommend this one, just because there are so many other great crime novels out there.
Of course, there’s also a lot of dross, and there’s plenty that’s worse than this too. Yeah…
It’s also the second book in a series, following on from the first one, which is called Framed. They’re basically contemporary crime novels that follow a guy who runs a snooker hall, which I guess is pretty much obligatory so that they can tie the stories back to Ronnie O’Sullivan and piggy back on his fame.
The first book was just okay, which to be honest was good enough for me, but then the second one takes forever to get started. In Framed, we’re thrown right in at the deep end and the story just picks up straight away. In this one, we have to wait 150 pages or so before anything really happens, which I wouldn’t mind if I was invested in the characters – but I wasn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad book, and I’d be just fine with it if it had come from an indie writer with no budget behind them. As it is though, it has the might of Pan Macmillan behind it, and I would have expected them to have done a better job of editing it. There are some pretty basic errors here, including a bunch of typos that made it feel pretty basic.
Overall then, it was kind of a disappointment, but not too much because it wasn’t as though I’d been expecting it to blow my mind. It just was what it was, a pretty bog standard celebrity book that I’ll forget pretty quickly, and that’s coming from someone who’s a Ronnie O’Sullivan fan. Even if you’re super into crime novels, I don’t think I could recommend this one, just because there are so many other great crime novels out there.
Of course, there’s also a lot of dross, and there’s plenty that’s worse than this too. Yeah…
April 3, 2021
Great book! I didn't read the first book, but I don't think you necessarily need to have to read this one. It wouldn't normally be my first choice but I really enjoyed it, set in the 90's London, gangs, Frankie James is really a good guy caught up with the wrong crowd, I wasn't happy with the ending and I'm hoping the next book answers a lot of questions for me otherwise I will be sad 😔 and I hope he gets the girl 😉
February 7, 2018
Excellent gritty real style, typical of Ronnie's character in real life. Good to see some suspense mixed in with the violence and a tender side with family values....... A great read bring on the next one!
November 9, 2017
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.
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.
July 26, 2018
Good idea but the book is almost a third of the way through before it gets going. Several times I thought about giving up but it got better the further in the book you got. However there's still a lot of unanswered questions around the subplot with his mother. Maybe they're answered in the next book but I won't be reading it I'm afraid.
December 29, 2020
I have to say I do really enjoy this series of clearly semi-autobiographical books. However there are three main storylines in this book - the god daughter, the mother and the snooker tournament. None of these are resolved in the book, seems as though it was almost ended in a rush. Still, no doubt there will be a third.
December 11, 2017
Martina Cole and Roberta Kray......... We have another from London writing in your style.
Keep this up and the London criminal gangs entourage are tied up for life
Keep this up and the London criminal gangs entourage are tied up for life
January 12, 2018
Loved it!
Great storyline & well written.
Cannot wait for the next in the soho nights series.
Great storyline & well written.
Cannot wait for the next in the soho nights series.
August 4, 2018
Surprisingly good,several lol moments,hope he finds time to write more
February 23, 2021
Really enjoyed the 2nd book and will be starting book 3 tomorrow.
May 27, 2022
These books are actually really good! Am really enjoying the series. Though I don't for one minute think Ronnie actually wrote them himself- theres definitely a ghostwriter involved here imo!
Read
June 3, 2023good read but not great.
January 7, 2025
Easy read, page turner good sunbed book
May 29, 2021
Having read the first novel earlier this year I was looking forward to this one. It didnt quite hit the heights of the first but it clcks over and moves quickly through the gears. Characters grow in the book and I liked the elements which linked back to the first book. Frankie continues to develop and I will certainly move to novel 3 and see what follows.
August 11, 2019
I’ve read the first book in the series Framed couple of years ago and I loved it, I’m also a huge fan of Ronnie but unfortunately I couldn’t get into this book. I found it quite slow.
September 16, 2019
It was ok. Although it was about gangsters, I am sure less swearing would have been alright. Should have read “Framed” first though.
February 4, 2018
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.
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.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews