Futures

Overview

Carol is a small-time cocaine dealer in 1987 London. A single parent to a young daughter, she is a good mother who is especially careful in her work life, introducing herself to customers as “Simone.” One of these customers is Phil, a financial analyst in the City who, in the haze of a coke binge, fantasizes with longtime friend and fellow analyst Jack about a cocaine futures market. When the scheme becomes a reality, Carol has an opportunity to go for a big deal that could be her ticket out of the business altogether, but that could also bring her into direct conflict with Gordon Murray and his brothers, the men at the top of the wholesale business who are prepared to do whatever it takes to stay there. Adding to the drama are a stock market crash that creates havoc, and a once-in-a-lifetime hurricane that sweeps across London, jeopardizing the communications system of the stock market itself. Carol is about to find herself at the intersection where three very different worlds are about to collide in this gripping crime novel.

Reviews

“A fast-paced, hard-boiled novel that pulls you back, effortlessly, into morally corrupt Thatcherite London. Barker [has] crisp, laconic, prose, [an] eye-for-detail storytelling, [a] command of the art of narrative, and [an] ear for fluid and convincing dialogue.”  —Stuart Christie, author, Granny Made Me an Anarchist

“If you want to get beyond the fairy tale version of the sordid underbelly of life, then you gotta check Futures out.”  —Stewart Home, author, 69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess

“In this fast-paced, streetwise take on eighties London, boundaries blur between the cocaine trade and newly deregulated financial markets. . . . Barker's portrait of a cynical, money-hungry culture skewers a moment in history that for good or ill (and mostly for ill) made Britain what it is today.”  —Hari Kunzru, author, The Impressionist and Memory Place

“The prose grabs you by the throat and squeezes. The characters are by turns reckless, ambitious, vulnerable, and weak. The story is set in the past but couldn't be more relevant. Futures is funny, frightening, and very dark.” —Ronan Bennett, author, The Catastrophist

"This is a serious literary achievement, a remarkably well told story that has real emotional depth." —David Pitt, BooklistOnline.com

"Barker's characters ring true and his story is an enthralling portrait of an era whose legacy still haunts us." —Publishers Weekly

"Equally three-dimensional in nailing its setting, and convincingly true to its time." —Tom Jennings, metamute.org

Author Biography

John Barker is a writer and book indexer. He is the author of Bending the Bars, a memoir of the time he spent in prison as a result of a conviction for conspiring to cause explosions. He served an additional five-year sentence in the early 1990s for conspiring to import cannabis.