***Now available for preorder: KILL 'EM ALL, the stunning sequel to KILL YOUR FRIENDS*** The viciously funny novel by John Niven, bestselling author of Kill Your Friends and Straight White Male. What do you do when a homeless man knows your name? How about when he turns out to be a friend you haven’t seen in twenty years? Do you treat him to a hot meal and see him on his way? Give him a wad of middle-class guilt money? Or take him in and get him back on his feet? For Alan, there’s no question – only natural that he’d want to see his old mate Craig off the streets, even if only for a few nights, and into some clean clothes. But what if the successful life you’ve made for yourself – good job, happy marriage, lovely kids, grand Victorian house (you did well out of the property boom, thank you very much) – is one that that your old pal would quite like to have too? Even if it means taking it from you? Following the divergent lives of two childhood friends, No Good Deed is a funny and painful examination of friendship, the strange currents of ambition, loathing, pity and affection that flow between people over the decades, and of men getting older as they fail and succeed.
Author
Born in Irvine, Ayrshire, Niven read English Literature at Glasgow University, graduating in 1991 with First Class honours. For the next ten years, he worked for a variety of record companies, including London Records and Independiente. He left the music industry to write full time in 2002 and published his debut novella Music from Big Pink in 2005 (Continuum Press). The novella was optioned for the screen by CC Films with a script has been written by English playwright Jez Butterworth. Niven's breakthrough novel Kill Your Friends is a satire of the music business, based on his brief career in A&R, during which he passed up the chance to sign Coldplay and Muse. The novel was published by William Heinemann in 2008 and achieved much acclaim, with Word magazine describing it as "possibly the best British Novel since Trainspotting". It has been translated into seven languages and was a bestseller in Britain and Germany. Niven has since published The Amateurs (2009), The Second Coming (2011), Cold Hands (2012) and Straight White Male (2013). He also writes original screenplays with writing partner Nick Ball, the younger brother of British TV presenter Zoë Ball. His journalistic contributions to newspapers and magazines include a monthly column for Q magazine, entitled "London Kills Me". In 2009 Niven wrote a controversial article for The Independent newspaper where he attacked the media's largely complacent coverage of Michael Jackson's death. Niven lives in Buckinghamshire with his fiancée and infant daughter. He has a teenage son from a previous marriage.
