The Blade Series

"The Blade series is an odyssey about a fourteen-year-old boy with a dangerous past and an uncertain future. I have tried to write a pacy thriller that not only focuses upon an engaging central character but also touches upon issues that concern me: gang culture, the exploitation of young people in fragmented communities, youth violence, and especially knife crime.
 
It horrifies me to think of young people using knives and while I am a storyteller rather than a crusader, I cannot deny that one of my reasons for writing the Blade series was to try to show young readers that you cannot wield a knife without devastating consequences both for your victims and yourself. Knives have nothing to do with honour or respect. They are instruments of pain, mutilation and death and the use of them requires a committed act of personal savagery.
 
The Blade series does not glorify, romanticise or in any way exalt the knife but seeks instead to show the hideous reality of knife culture. The boy at the heart of the story has lived by violence but he is not a thug. He is smart, articulate, even likable, and he's in terrible danger. His enemies are drawing nearer, he's becoming increasingly haunted by guilt for the things he's done, and he's struggling to find some kind of redemption. His life now hangs in the balance."