Elvis Over England - Tapa dura

After burying his mother, Eddie wanders round the cemetery and finds the headstone of his boyhood friend Jeffrey Jones, or Jet as he was called after seeing "Rock Around the Clock" and buying his first Teddy Boy suit. "A candle too soon snuffed out"reads the inscription. Eddie - now middle-aged and out of work - cannot stop thinking about his wild days with Jet and the extraordinary events which led up to his premature death. On the spur of the moment, he blows his redundancy money on a 1955 crimson Cadillac - just like the one Elvis drove - abandons his nagging wife to her life as a lollipop lady, and sets out on a voyage northwards to the place where Elvis himself once touched British earth ...

Barry Hines is known, first and foremost, as the author of Kes (A KESTREL FOR A KNAVE: MJ 1968). However, he is also the author of eight other novels (all published by MJ/Penguin), the most recent of which was, THE HEART OF IT (Michael Joseph 1994 and Penguin 1995). He is a prolific scriptwriter for television, one of his scripts winning a BAFTA award. He lives in Sheffield.