London IrishZane Radcliffe2002

There are 750,000 Irish living in London. One of them has to get out. For good. It’s summer 1999 and Bic (half-Irish, half-Scots and half-cut) ekes out a living selling crêpes to the hordes descending on Greenwich market in the shadow of the Millennium dome. The year 2000 can’t come soon enough. One severed ear, two bizarre deaths and the arrest of his dog for civil disobedience -- so far Bic’s annus has been pretty horribilis. But a silver, or rather, a raven-haired lining appears in the guise of Roisin. She’s from Home. She’s heart-stoppingly beautiful and she’s taken the stall opposite Bic’s. Despite her over-protective brothers, things are definitely looking up.

At least they are until Bic wakes up the-morning-after-the-night-before, in his clothes, in Edinburgh, to find he’s the UK’s Most Wanted Man -- on the run and with fourteen murders to his name.