The Do-Not Press, under its imprint Bloodlines, is giving great play to a new generation of British crime writers, although this present offering is by a relative old-timer at the game. This is the eighth Ripley book to feature London cabdriver and man-about-town Fitzroy Maclean Angel - known more familiarly as Angel. Here he is acting as driver-cum-bodyguard to a trio of new-wave fashion girls called Thalia, Lyn and Amy, as they peddle their wares around centre city. Street-wise as he is, Angel is hard put to keep up with the sexy girls as they strut their stuff, and when a photographer acquaintance who has been snapping them ends up done violently to death, Angel finds himself in the defecation house with the walls about to tumble down. Ripley knows his London and the eccentric characters frequenting it, and his in-your-face prose style exactly suits his themes of smalltime crooks, pimps, peddlers and pushers going about their nefarious business. He also has a refreshing line in black humour that helps to lighten the prevailing air of desperation.