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This is a work of narrative non-fiction based on the last days of the fugitive Raoul Moat, a Geordie bodybuilder and mechanic who became nationally notorious in Britain one hot summer´s week when, after killing his ex-girlfriend´s new lover, shooting her in the stomach,
and blinding a policeman, he disappeared into the woods of Northumberland, evading discovery for seven days even when TV tracker Ray Mears was employed by the police to find him. Bizarrely, alcoholic ex-England footy star Paul Gazza´ Gascoigne also played a role, trying to get a fishing rod and a chicken to Moat by taxi. Eventually, cornered by the police, Moat shot himself.

Andrew Hankinson, a journalist and a Geordie, tells Moat´s story in the second person, which means that the reader is uncomfortably close at all times to Raoul Moat. It is a reading experience unrelieved by authorial distance or omniscient interpretation. Everything comes from Moat´s mind from his recordings and writings and the narrative Hankinson has woven is compelling, even if Moat´s sentimentality, suspicion, and self-pity are never far from sight.

This is a narrative in the great tradition of Norman Mailer or Hunter S. Thompson or, given its North-of-England flavour, Gordon Burn or David Peace.

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