1979. PUNK IS IN DECLINE.

ESPECIALLY THIS PUNK.

March, 1979. Sid Vicious is dead, Margaret Thatcher is very much alive, and Barry has just arrived in London. Twenty years old, Irish and angry, he cons his way into a job at Sellafield, home of Britain's military-grade plutonium. It's the start of a hilarious and hallucinatory coming-of-age tale that ranges from sordid coal-bunker squats to the tea room at the Ritz, via the Parisian Left Bank and the blooming poppy fields of Ireland.

Here is a portrait of an artist on acid, amphetamines and PCP, who finds himself working at the heart of Britain's nuclear industry. It pulses with stories and stories within stories, eye-watering, sexy, terrifying and poignant. A wild, hellish descent that is also a rush for the stars, A Ton of Malice is the demented love-child of Irvine Welsh, Hunter S. Thompson and Matt Groening.

And, if it matters, it's almost all true.

'Dazzling ... the author has a way with words as slick and sudden as a flick knife... a breathtaking storyteller'
The Sunday Times

'Wild, funny and furiously unsentimental -- a fine debut'
Guardian

'If you want to laugh this summer -- the kind of filthy guffaw that will make your sun-lounger neighbours wish they were reading what you were reading -- buy A Ton of Malice, Barry McKinley's tale of sex, drugs and working at Sellafield'
Evening Standard

'McKinley is a huge talent... A Ton of Malice is a powerful, original work... There is music in the sentences, a gruff, down-at-heel, Tom Waitsy lyricism, counterpointed with staccato machine-gun bursts of inchoate rage. Occasionally the voice allows itself to flare into sunbursts of beauty... A dark, funny, gritty trip of a story that tells it like it is.'
Joseph O'Connor, Irish Times

'brings to mind Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting and Bruce Robinson's imperishable film classic, Withnail and I… The writing is fresh, piercing and very, very funny… Do not miss this book'
RTE.ie

'An astonishing portrait of toxic masculinity to rank alongside Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son and Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. Savagely funny, and ultimately heartbreaking. Read it.'
Julian Gough

'Full of brilliant barbs and humour... hugely enjoyable and thought-provoking'
Sunday Business Post

'Beautifully timed with a nice balance of cynical humour and genuine emotion'
Mail on Sunday

'A study in wizened, impotent rage, measured out in wicked one-liners... It would be tempting to call the whole thing Beckett meets Shepard'
Irish Times