27

27...that mystical age when so many musicians decide to 'leave the building' for one last time...is the name of the bostin' debut novel from Birmingham writer Ryan Davis, who's set the whole thing in the seedier pre-millennium streets of Brum. Ahhhhh happy days...when you really could "Eat Like a King for a £1" at Mr Egg..albeit a King with clogged arteries and adult acne...but still. It's a suitably gritty tale of Jimmy Tyrant, singer of a band who had one hit then went down the dumper. Jimmy decides to end it all but gets that wrong as well and spins off into a world of drugs, gangs and crazy people. For any native Brummies it's littered with familiar names and places (which makes a nice change), for 'outsiders' it's a grimy portrait of a City's seedy underbelly, sticky with vomit, blood and pretty much every other bodily fluid. It takes something to get me reading a novel these days (I blame the internet), but it gripped me like that weird bloke on the Hagley Road who keeps shaking my hand and won't let go. Well worth a read.