The King of the Ants

By Charlie Higson

Book Overview

'Charlie Higson's thrillers are major events' Mark Billingham

'Funny, very tough and full of action' Patricia Highsmith
'Uncoils with wit and imagination'Time Out

It seemed straightforward enough. Sean had now consumed so much alcohol that everything seemed perfectly reasonable. He'd started planning the job already. The first problem was how to do it. Thirteen thousand pounds in an envelope seems a fair price for a man's life. Particularly if you don't know the man, he seems a nonentity, and you quite fancy his wife. And there's no chance of being caught. Sean is a drifter, working as a building labourer and waiting for something to happen.

When Sean is offered easy money to tail someone and even more easy money to dispose of him, it's all more tempting than you might think. Except when you realize that you've been led up the garden path the whole way...

King of the Ants is dark, disturbing and violently comic. In the tradition of both Joe Orton and Iain Banks, Charlie Higson pinpoints the casual vagaries of evil and its attendant powers. Unnerving, horribly accurate and wickedly enjoyable, it remains Higson's finest book.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0349144877
• ISBN13: 9780349144870
• Release Date: February 2022
• Publisher: Abacus (UK)
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.0" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

A story of brutality, revenge, and ultimately human affairs

Actually, Charles Higson narrates a simple story. A seemingly ordinary person working mostly in construction sites, is given a bizzare opportunity to make some fast and good money. He's offered more than he'd make working in 2-3 months to follow an accountant for several days in his everyday life and report what he discovers to a shadowy figure who obviously has some even more shadowy scores to settle. He does so, but as it so often happens in life the situation starts taking some weird twists unforeseen by him and by his instructors. This ordinary person sudenly finds himself becoming murderer and then a fugitive as the deals he's put together have not come through. But lo and behold because all this happens in the first half of the book. From then the story takes a turn for the surreal and brutal as the protagonist of the book gets captured and goes through what can only be described as utter hell. You'll have a pretty difficult time forgetting the latter part of the book let alone even reading it if you happen to not be gifted with a strong stomach. This is story written in excellent pace and with nicely distributed touches of humour, cynicism and brio by an author who obviously has tremendous potential. Charles Higson has no limitations about the stretches he gives his story and you're constantly in for new surprises as you progress in the story. In a new generation of authors who are bringing forth the uglier side of human nature in a society governed by the warped ethics of the money-god and the relentless effort of people to survive regardless of what this might involve. Great stuff.