Heavy Duty People
“…a fantastic anti-hero…positively Shakespearian in his moral
complexity...If I could only recommend one book this year, it would be Heavy
Duty People” – Vulpes Libris
Damage’s club has had an offer it can’t refuse, to patch over to join The
Brethren MC.
But as the bikes rumble and roar across the wild Northern fells, what does
this mean for Damage and his brothers? What choices will they have to make
as they ride through the wind? What bloody oil stained history might it
reawaken? And why are The Brethren making this offer?
Loyalty to his club and his brothers has been Damage’s life and route to
wealth, but what happens when business becomes serious and brother starts
killing brother?
From being in a gang to becoming a gangster, Heavy Duty People is the book
that invented Biker Noir.
Get Carter meets Sons of Anarchy in this gritty British crime thriller, now
in development for TV.
Purchase Links
Amazon =
http://mybook.to/HeavyDutyPeople
Etsy
– signed trilogy = https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1021164428/the-brethren-mc-the-heavy-duty-trilogy
Excerpt
As
a kid Damage has fallen in with the local bike gang and turned up for a ride
out…
And then at a gap in the traffic we were off, pulling out onto the road, a cacophony of exhaust blast echoing between the shop fronts as we headed up the main drag through town and the Saturday shopping crowds on either pavement.
As
we rode slowly along the road behind the traffic it was my first experience of
riding with a group this big.
There
was a sense of the power waiting to be unleashed, the over-revving of the
engines just to get just a bit more noise bouncing between the walls on either
side, the ratcheting up of our own adrenaline. I could feel a wild exuberant
excitement welling up within me, a feeling of invincibility.
When
you see a group of bikes, you know they are together. You know they are a pack
of guys who know each other. You know that they are heading somewhere together
deliberately, as a group. You wonder where, you wonder why, you wonder who they
are and what will happen on the way. And now I was part of that.
Heads
turned to see us go past. You didn’t look, just like you didn’t look at your
reflections in the plate glass windows of the shops. But out of the corner of
your eye you could see the heads turn. The small children point.
We
crested the top of the rise and headed towards the crossroads and the drag up
the hill out of town that allowed us to pull past the cars in front.
If
you’ve ridden bikes then I don’t have to tell you what it’s like.
If
you haven’t then it’s difficult to describe.
You
drive a car. You turn a wheel, you press a pedal and it goes. A car is an
object that you control.
You
ride a bike. You dance with it, it goes where your body tells it. Your bike is
your partner, it sways and shimmies with you as you move your hips and twist
your body to shift your weight.
In a
car you are inside, insulated from the world, surrounded by a cocooning wall of
steel.
On a
bike you are outside, exposed to the world, feeling the wind, the rain, the
warmth, the cold, and with only your skill, your luck, and a leather jacket
between you and the ripping tarmac tearing past you below.
As
we headed into the open countryside, the line of bikes began to string out. The
gang were all on bigger bikes. Seven-fifties and upwards, mostly a mix of
UJMs and some older Brit twins; back in
the car park there had been the usual good-natured joshing about Brit shit and
Jap crap.
On
the more open roads we came swarming up from nowhere in seconds behind cars
that we caught, and barrelling past them, rocketing by in a wail of powerful
noise without even slowing down.
But
then in more twisty bits we might get caught up without the clear overtake,
bunching up behind a car, all bright lights, chrome, noise and thunder just
behind the driver’s back bumper, feeling the tension, the eyes in the rear view
mirror, the kids in the back seat turning round to look open-mouthed, before
the road straightened out again as we crunched down a gear and with a bawling
scream of pure exhaust noise we launched ourselves past the outside of the car,
tearing up the road again to the next bend.
Riding
in a pack was completely different from riding on your own. As a rider on your
own machine, you are still singularly alone, testing yourself, totally
responsible for your own actions and how far you are able to push yourself. You
against the road.
Yet
at the same time there was both that feeling of invulnerability, of being part
of something bigger, us against them, and that feeling of competitiveness with
the other guys. As a pack you are always egging each other on.
At
the back on my two-fifty with Gyppo on my tail, I was having to scratch hard to
keep up with the charging pack. And failing. So the times when we got caught
behind something, bunching up into a jostling knot of bikes and power and
noise, just waiting to be fired past the car’s windows at the first hint of a
gap were great for me as they gave me a chance to catch up before the more
powerful machines howled away again into the distance, stringing out into a line
of glinting swerving disappearing spots as the road opened out. Finally on the
last stretch, Gyppo pulled out and twisting the throttle, zoomed past me at
probably ninety or so into the final bends leading up to the summit.
As I
pulled into the Edgeside car park I must have had a grin a mile wide.
Most
of the gang had dismounted and were already filing into the café. Gyppo and
Tiny were standing by the row of bikes as I kicked down my side stand at the
end of the line.
‘Not
bad considering it’s a two-fifty.’
‘You’re
going to need to get yourself a bigger bike, kid.’
I
got the feeling that I had just passed another test.
***
And
then we were off again, down the falling hairpin curves of the Edgeside pass
and out towards the flat valley below.
Riding
at the tail of the pack, for the first time in my life, I truly felt accepted
in the company of men. I belonged.
I
had become a tagalong.
Author Bio –
Iain Parke imports industrial quantities of Class A drugs, kills people and
lies (a lot) for a living, being a British based crime fiction writer.
Iain became obsessed with motorcycles at an early age, taking a six hundred
mile cross-country tour to Cornwall as soon as he bought a moped at the
tender age of sixteen. After working at a London dispatch job delivering
parcels on a motorcycle, he built his first chopper in his bedroom at
university, undeterred by the fact that the workshop was upstairs.
Iain worked in insolvency and business restructuring in the UK and Africa,
where he wrote his first thriller The Liquidator. The success of that
propelled him to write a ‘biker lit’ trilogy about the Brethren Motorcycle
Club, a ‘cult’ hit which has recently been optioned for
television. Today Iain lives off the grid, high up on the North
Pennines in Northumberland with his wife, dogs, and a garage full of
motorcycle restoration projects.
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Giveaway to Win Signed Heavy Duty trilogy bundle + sweatshirt (Open
INT)
1st Prize
1 x signed copy of the Heavy Duty Trilogy
1 x Heavy Duty bookmark
1 x DILLIGAF hoodie
9 x Runners up prize.
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the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or
over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used
for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the
exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway
organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time
Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not
responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
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