Dylan Savage
Dylan Savage is our main protagonist and gives our novel its title. The book is his story. Here is a little background on him.
Dylan is fourteen and lives in a high rise block of flats called Renfield Tower in London’s Whitechapel. Every morning he gets up early to deliver the papers. Unluckily for Dylan, Henry Grime is the borough’s thug who runs the local gang as well as being his mother’s pimp. Dylan is a drug mule for Henry’s Blud Crew, moving drugs around Whitechapel.
Dylan could have a different future. He is a brilliant mathematician, but the future seems set for Dylan, as predictable as him being able to recite pi to twenty decimal places. He’ll never get out of Whitechapel, never get away from the drugs, poverty and Henry Grime. Even with the help of his best friend Samuel and his maths teacher Mrs Stokes, Dylan is fighting forces he can never hope to beat.
That is until one day, being chased by a rival gang, he takes shelter in a rundown house on his paper round that no one else seems to be able to see. In the house there is something that offers to help Dylan, something strong enough to fight the forces wanting to pull him under. But on the streets of Whitechapel where life is cheap, Dylan might want to be careful just who, or what, he makes a deal with.
Detective Sergeant Kenny Stokes
Detective Sergeant Kenny Stokes is a murder investigator in London’s East End, but he’s no ordinary policemen. Kenny has a gift, though as often as not it’s a curse. He can feel the echoes of trauma, from the living and the dead. It makes him a good cop, pointing him in the right direction, but his head is never quiet in a city of ten million souls and even more who’ve died and left their trace.
When Kenny inspects the first victim’s body, found in an alley, he catches glimpses of her final minutes. But one thing makes no sense – the growl, rubbling and menacing. A dog couldn’t have done it. Not only that, it looks too much like the infamous MO of Jack the Ripper.
The police pray another body doesn’t turn up. The last thing they need is Jack the Ripper copycat. But Whitechapel isn’t the kind of place where prayers are answered.
Henry Grime
Henry Grime runs the Whitechapel Ends. It’s his turf, his domain, his kingdom. You want a fix? He’s your man. Sex? He runs all the girls and the webcams. Make a more interesting bet? Henry owns the bookies, or at least he’s the front man for a shell company run by the real power in the East End of London.
Henry has a soft spot for Dylan Savage. Sure Henry owns the boy’s mum and she bring in regular money, but you’ve got to keep your eye out for talent. Recruit them young. Get them used to the violence of the street, turn them into the tools that will do the job.
How was Henry to know Dylan would drag his Blud Crew first into a turf war and then something a whole lot worse?
Misha Stokes
Misha Stokes loves teaching. She especially loves teaching in a rough inner city school. It’s where she can make the most difference. But it can be heart breaking. Take Dylan Savage for example. He is the best mathematician in the whole school, and that might include the teachers. He has a special gift, but his home life is disruptive to say the least. If only she could get him in school, he could be anything he wanted to be.
Misha would do anything for her students, including putting herself in harms way. And Misha is right, Dylan is an extraordinary boy, an extraordinary boy in an extraordinary amount of trouble. Trouble squared. Trouble cubed. Trouble to a power beyond reckoning.
Chantel
Life has already written Chantel off. At nineteen, she’s an escort and cam girl. People don’t think much of her beyond a pretty face and what she can give them – either sex or money. That means they see what they want to see, and she can pass unnoticed. She’d almost forgotten how to dream, until she meant Dylan, and maybe the same was true for Dylan. They are both trapped, but in their different ways, maybe they’ll help set each other free.
These are just a few of the characters in Savage, a tale about the fate of a young man on a tough estate in the East End of London. If the drugs and crime weren’t hard enough to avoid, then what lurks behind the door of 25 Gallows Court might prove impossible for Dylan Savage to get away from – in this life or the next…
You can sample a free audio download of the first hour of Savage here.
If you’d like to read more, you can find Savage at your local Amazon store here.
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