True Crime is the last in Jake Arnott's trilogy of novels which focus on the London gangland from the 1960s to the present day. However Jake is no stranger to West Yorkshire - he has worked for both Red Ladder Theatre and Leeds Social Services.

In True Crime Jake Arnott completes the trilogy he began with The Long Firm and brings the story of the London (and now Essex) criminal underworld bang up to date.

The tale is told, with characteristic pace, by three people: a seedy journalist, Tony Meehan whom we first met in He Kills Coppers and who has now controlled his homicidal tendencies, a small time actress with a secret past that connects her to the underworld and an ex-burglar-cum-night-club bouncer and drug dealer.

Of course, their paths cross. Meehan is commissioned by the odious Sid Franks of The Sunday Illustrated to ghost the tale of recently released bullion robber Eddie Doyle and persuaded that there is a better tale in locating the missing gold and the missing villain Harry Starks, who readers will remember from the earlier novels.

In setting up the milieu, Arnott successfully mixes his fictional creations in with real events. Starks is first spotted back in England at Ronnie Kray's funeral. Gangsters turn up dead in a Range Rover in an Essex field, teenagers OD on Ecstasy. Real life characters are again fictionalised.

It is through the tales of Julie, the actress, and Gaz "The Geezer" Kelly that Arnott develops one of his key themes: the fascination with low-life criminals and their violent life-styles by celebs and dissolute fun-seeking members of the upper-classes. Julie is involved with a film penned by her ex-public school boyfriend who thinks he is the British Tarantino.

Kelly's story chronicles the changing opportunities and life-styles of the criminal classes. He begins as a football hooligan, freely enjoying himself brawling on the terraces, then gets involved with the violent stewarding of pop venues and moves on to drug dealing and buys a house in depest Essex.

Each time Gaz comes out of prison he needs to be brought up to date with changes in fashion ­ gays dressed as skinheads, the need to be seen in labels, ex-hooligan friends with long hair and dungarees but he isn't slow to spot new-illegal­business openings. Drugs sold in clubs are the nineties new money spinner, then it's organising raves.

Smart he may be, but Gaz cannot understand how the easy way to make money is through property development. As with the posh sucking up to the Krays and young film makers wanting to meet "real" gangsters (though they invariably only get minor players) so criminals, for their part, seek respectability and put their ill-gotten gains into property speculation. It's a rum old world and Jake Arnott recreates it brilliantly.
Dave Verguson