Martin Hacklett is white, working-class, ill-educated and impoverished. But at nights he becomes the London Leaper, a death-defying athlete criss-crossing the capital’s skyline in restless search of physical challenges, and symbolic escape from a culture that doesn’t care for him or his kind. As he races from roof to roof, he troubles the sleep and conscience of an unquiet city.

“A novel that engages in a non-stereotype manner to face fairly the issues of Britain’s white working class”

Rt. Hon. Frank Field, M.P.

“Powerfully and memorably evokes a threatened subculture in a rapidly altering London, as the Cockney is pushed to the edges of English life”

Garry Bushell, journalist

“A taut, compelling, and absolutely original take on contemporary Britain…memorable and highly rewarding”

Michael Wilding, novelist, Spiked

“Derek Turner’s new novel takes this versatile author in a direction that will surprise and delight readers of his previous novel, Sea Changes. A highly atmospheric evocation of twenty-first century alienation”

Chilton Williamson, Jr., novelist and editor of Chronicles – A Magazine of American Culture

“A gem of a book – angry, passionate about London, east London, the faded pomp of the Thames and the richness of the north Kent coast; it’s funny, sad, and very moving”

Barney Campbell, author of Rain

“An intensely cerebral work that expresses itself as rumination on states of flow, muscle memory, and action as an escape from thought…stark and thrilling”

Frankie Gaffney, author of Dublin Seven

“Mr. Turner continues to astound with the grace of his prose and the sincerity of his treatment of English people and the modern English nation…an incisive appraisal of British multiculturalism that Turner does better than perhaps any novelist of his generation”

Michael Warren Davis, University Bookman

“Beautifully written and full of arresting metaphors”

Tito Perdue, author of Lee

“Turner’s descriptions of London are one of the highlights…The city becomes a character: old, vibrant, curled along its river, evoked in swift effective sentences creating precise and memorable images. The prose is a pleasure to read…Turner’s art allows for the messy complexity of life”

Liam Guilar, Chronicles

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