Alasdair Gray's third novel is set in London in the sixties:
'London was wealthy. Other British cities had been built by money and still contained large amounts of it, but money seemed a slower substance in the north... those owning it had not been liberated by it. Their faces were severe, their mouths as grimly clenched as those without.
But here in London...money had accumulated to a point where it flashed into wealth, and free, swift, reckless, mercuric. he could feel it humming behind the ancient and modern facades, throbbing under the streets like silver- electric sap or semen.'Kelvin Walker is in London to make his fortune. he plans to start at the top and through his absurd ambition, a megalomania surface that is unrelieved by his insensitive and ruthless attempts at a friendship and romance. Yet is he all bad? Or is it the establishment figures with vested interests whom he tricks and deceives, who are the insidious villains of our world?

Publishers details: Canongate Publishing

ISBN: 0 86241 072 X