Kill Your Friends

by John Niven

Published 7 February 2008

***Now available to buy: KILL 'EM ALL, the stunning sequel to KILL YOUR FRIENDS***

Meet Steven Stelfox.

London 1997: New Labour is sweeping into power and Britpop is at its zenith. A&R man Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through the music industry, fuelled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine, searching for the next hit record amid a relentless orgy of self-gratification.

But as the hits dry up and the industry begins to change, Stelfox must take the notion of cut throat business practices to murderous new levels in a desperate attempt to salvage his career.


The Amateurs

by John Niven

Published 2 April 2009
Gary Irvine is pretty happy in Ardgirvan, a small town on Scotland's west coast. Only two things would improve his life - children and a lower golf handicap. Both are unlikely. The former because Gary's wife Pauline is intent on leaving him as soon as she's snared Findlay Masterson, the self-made carpet millionaire she's set her sights on. And the latter because, frankly, Gary is an appalling golfer. Far away from the world of golf handicaps, down in the murky depths of Ardgirvan's criminal underclass, Gary's hapless brother Lee is stumbling from one botched drug deal to another, his orbit drawing terrifyingly close to local crime overlord Ranta Campbell. Then Gary gets smashed on the head by a golf ball and knocked into a coma. He wakes to find that the neurological trauma he's suffered has resulted in some pretty radical side effects - among them an absolutely perfect golf swing. He wins his local club championship. He breaks the course record. He qualifies for the Open ...Meanwhile Pauline and Masterson have hit upon a plan to help him avoid a ruinously expensive divorce. It's the kind of plan that ends with a funeral.
Their stories converge as the two brothers stumble into uncharted territory - Lee towards murder and Gary teeing it up with his golfing hero, Calvin Linklater, the world number one, in the Open Championship ..."The Amateurs" is a hilarious examination of family and sport, of the ties that bind and how trying to put a little white ball in a hole can literally drive some men insane.