Framed: Ronnie O'Sullivan

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What I will say about this story is that it felt very ‘male’. I don’t even know what I mean by that except to say that the whole story was very male-oriented which I suppose is to be expected when we only really follow the story from Frankie’s point of view. Frankie was a likeable character and I enjoyed following him across London as he attempted to work out what happened and how his brother turned up on his doorstep covered in blood.

The first in a gripping crime fiction series by snooker legend Ronnie O' Sullivan, Framed is a fast-paced, tightly plotted thriller.Frankie James is a young man with a lot on his shoulders. His mother disappeared when he was sixteen; his father's in jail for armed robbery; and he owes rent on his Soho snooker club to one of London's toughest gangsters. Things, you'd think, can only get better. Actually, they're about to get a whole lot worse. It was, for me, also a very visual book. I am not sure if it was written with screen in mind but, to be honest, it would make for a pretty good translation to that media if the author so desires. The story itself did feel quite formulaic, almost predictable at times in how the story plodded along but I have to say that I did actually enjoy how the story flowed and how we knew the danger to Frankie was coming from somewhere, but until the end I never actually knew where that place was. Frankie gets himself into lots of scrapes and some unfortunate situations as the story progresses and I actually believed in him as a character and wanted him to find those answers and come out on top. I genuinely had high hopes for this book. Ronnie's own life story is fascinating, and as a template for a character, Ronnie himself is a great place to start. But this book really didn't exploit all this subject matter as I'd hoped.

This was one of the best gangland crime books I have read in a very long time. And I read a LOT of books. Ignoring the crime and solving thereof, it had a lot more going on around it which made it a very well balanced overall read for me. Yes, as I have already mentioned, Frankie does punch above his weight on quite a few occasions but then he also screws up a near equal amount of times so, again balanced. Yes also, there were a few cliched moments to be had but, again, mostly in context and totally forgivable. But in the dog-eat-dog underworld of 1990s Soho - as a vicious gang war rages between London's two foremost crime families - will Frankie be tough enough, and smart enough to come out on top?