CLEARING THE TABLE

A thriller with a killer twist, Clearing the Table is the latest in Nick Rippington’s Boxer Boys gangland series which follows the fortunes and misfortunes of London’s Dolan crime family.When Sly Dolan receives the message - Your daughter has been taken - he thinks it has to be a wind-up as he doesn’t have any children. Or so he thought.Then he encounters a lover with whom he shared a brief relationship while on the run in Spain at the turn of the Millennium, and his life is suddenly thrown into chaos.Naomi Richards proves to him that the girl is real and the kidnapping is real then throws in the final curve ball. Unless she can come up with £20m soon the girl he has never met will be executed.Naomi has no way of finding that sort of cash, but believes as a member of one of the most wealthy gangs around Sly should be able to raise the ransom.But he holds none of the purse strings, and realises he needs to come up with a plan to find the cash. Finally he hits on a solution, but it will mean betraying his own family, outwitting his dying father, and dragging the Boxer Boys blindly into dangerous territory.And with every move he is pulled deeper into a feud rooted in old gold, older grudges, and secrets buried since the bloody fallout of the infamous Brink’s-Mat bullion robbery.With time running out and enemies closing in, Sly has to decide whether he is still the reckless joker everyone underestimates or the father Crystal needs him to become.What he doesn’t understand is that the kidnappers have a more sinister agenda - one that threatens to cost him everything.