Booms And Busts

It's 1987 and Harry Spittle's life is going pretty well: the City of London is booming and his legal career is on an upward trajectory. His long-term relationship with girlfriend Penny is back on an even keel - for now - and they are about to become parents; they are also the proud owners of their first home and have finally joined the property-owning class. So of course everything is about to go horribly wrong...It's bad enough that he finds a partner's dead body sprawled across a desk in a compromising condition when he returns to the office late one Friday evening and he goes on to unwisely accepts his senior partner's offer to 'sort the problem out'. Life is further complicated when Magda Kleinkopf, an old friend from Harry's days working in a Hampshire hotel, turns up at his house desperate to have him sort out her UK citizenship to help her save her sister from the East German authorities. This leads him into conflict with his sister Dina, who now works for MI5 in a mysterious capacity. We follow Harry as he risks losing his friends, his family, his career and possibly his life to an incurable disease. Everything comes to a head as the storm clouds gather. Can there be a happy ending? Set against the booming economy of Thatcherite politics and the imminent bust at the end of October 1987, we see Harry in a new guise. In this, the third in the series of the Harry Spittle Sagas Harry is all grown up but not really sure how to handle the responsibility, and the pressure is on to tie up the loose ends before his child is born.