Amidst the squalor of 1960s East End London, this visceral novel plunges readers into the young life of John Best, a boy whose path leads to a life of crime forged on the poverty-stricken streets. From the bustling docks to derelict council estates, A Kid Out the Flats chronicles Best’s descent into the city’s turbulent criminal underbelly.

Stealing to survive alongside his gang of mates, John soon finds himself caught between warring factions of the IRA and Jamaican Yardie drug gangs. The narrative brings an unflinching authenticity to this tale of resilience against deprivation, violence, and familial strife. John’s misadventures unfurl in a close-knit yet volatile community, pulling no punches in depicting his brushes with these murderous organisations and London’s outlandish criminal outfits.

Anecdotes of the East End’s most notorious personalities and crimes lend a gritty realism to this immersive journey through the area’s darkest eras and ugly drug trade realities. Yet it remains John Best’s story of triumph – a tenacious battle for survival, friendship, and family loyalties in a world where Irish paramilitaries clash with Jamaican drug lords on London’s unforgiving streets.

Raw and uncompromising, A Kid Out the Flats plunges into the abyss of London’s criminal depths and one man’s resolute determination to conquer the demons that breed there, even as he navigates the dangerous waters between opposing criminal forces.