Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s almost a year since my most recent novel, The Lost Boys of Prometheus City, was first published (on Christmas Day 2016). As a little birthday present to the book, I thought I’d give it the headline treatment on my blog again, and provide you with a few reasons why you should choose it for that last minute Christmas present for the story-lover in your life.
WHY SHOULD I BUY IT?
Well, in this instance I think you should shell out some of your hard-earned on account of the cover. You should definitely judge this book on its cover, with that excellent image of a decaying Leeds city centre so brilliantly portrayed by the graphic artist Jack Hurley (aka Loudribs – look him up online).
FOR THE STORY – HERE’S THE WRITE-UP:
“We lived life closer to the sun than most. Sometimes we got blinded by it. We lived the high life. By day, we worked on the top floor of One City Square; by night, the top floors of clubs. Then back to bed at our penthouses.”
Neal Grace, Carl Sharp and Adam Warshawski are A-list. They’re young, handsome and rich. They go to all the best parties. Women want to bed them; men want their phone numbers. They are the face of brash, post-millennium Leeds, a city which is itself on its uppers.
But one false move is all it takes for these three ‘young princes’ of Leeds to tumble off their pedestal. After they instigate an incident of shocking violence against two definite Z-listers, life spins into a terrifying downward spiral for them.
But it ain’t just me saying it. Here’s a few choice reviews from Amazon:
Mr. L, Amazon Reviewer: “I really, really enjoyed this book. Haven’t read any of Mr Kirby’s work before, and this was a highly enjoyable introduction to it. For me, his writing style was right up my street. There’s a kind of Jack Kerouac fluidity to it, and a Hunter S Thompson quirkiness, too. This is the story of a group of friends living an almost celebrity-style high-life as wealthy city accountants, whose own self-created status becomes, ultimately, their downfall. There’s a hint of Bret Easton Ellis’ ‘American Psycho’ – not that the characters are psychotic murderers, but the name-dropping fixations with material possessions, as these characters build a world around themselves that is indulgent and superficial, and how this has affected their moral attitudes. There’s also a hint of “The Wolf of Wall Street” as things effectively spiral out of control. There are insightful and witty observations in Kirby’s stream-of-consciousness style narrative; a tale of morality, too, as the narrator comes to terms with the consequences of his actions. A recommended read, indeed.”
A. Devey, Amazon Reviewer: “This city in the early months of the 21st century is booming, and Neal Grace along with his colleagues Ads and Carl, is one of its ‘Princes’. He has left behind a humble background to earn a fortune in financial services, embracing the possibilities of deregulated capitalism for all he is worth, which soon becomes a pretty penny. As the story opens Neal is waited on by servile service workers, venerated by materialistic groupies and the target of circling drug dealers from the dark side of the dream while thinking of anyone with less than himself as so many extras in the film of his life. But in a bravura first chapter, Neal will discover it only takes one evening, and a single horrific act of violence, for the whole edifice supporting his way of life to come immediately crashing down.
By my reckoning ‘The Lost Boys of Prometheus City’ is AJ Kirby’s thirtieth book; quite an output when you consider Kirby’s only been writing seriously for a decade. While being so prolific can have its downsides, with his stories occasionally reading more like an early draft that lacks the polish and repeated editing the big boys of fiction takes as their right, it also means his prose always has a certain energy, a spontaneity, and, at its best, a tendency to barrel along in a way that’s thoroughly engrossing.
It also means the author has improved by DOING, and this novel is perhaps his most accomplished piece yet. We meet Neal as an over-privileged hedonist within his three-man gang of Northern England Gordon Gekkos, but their story quickly becomes tense then rapidly unspools from there, with Kirby telling his tale in the first person as he draws us into the fraught, dissatisfied, changeable mental landscape of his easily led protagonist. An atmosphere of regret, amorality and emptiness pervades this fast-paced thriller with its tumbling, freewheeling sentences, full of stream of consciousness left-turns, pop culture references from the time (Lee Bowyer anyone?) and bracketed asides.”
Miss S. Bryant, Amazon Reviewer: “This was a great read! AJ Kirby’s narrative style imitates detective work which investigates the inevitable downfall of the ‘lost boys’. As the tension grows, the narrative cleverly skits around from past to present tense, echoing the paranoia and despair of the protagonist, Neal Grace. Kirby uses the stream of consciousness narrative style to capture Neal’s emotions and this also gradually unveils the plot, as you rely on Neal to work out the details.
‘The Lost Boys of Prometheus City’ offers a nostalgia for Leeds and you see this through the characters’ passion for the city, and also the way Kirby weaves Yorkshire dialect and sayings into the text. The precise description of the streets of Leeds draws a parallel to the geographical accuracy of Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ in Dublin, where the character’s journey is mapped out by the author. This detail allows Kirby to build on the crime themes of the novel, which effectively stalks his characters around Leeds.
I would definitely recommend this book!”
Here’s a couple of pics from my appearance as the HEADLINE ACT at ‘Word Club’ at The Chemic Tavern, Leeds, on Friday 10th February, where I performed a reading from the “bravura” opening chapter of The Lost Boys of Prometheus City. 
There’s a piece on The Lost Boys of Prometheus City, and its long and arduous route to publication, in this month’s North Leeds Life magazine (which boasts a lovely cover featuring sheep – see left). You can read the issue online by (sheep) dipping into
paintthistownred 