Jack and the Lad - Mickey Mayhew - Bog

A West End girl who lusted after East End barrow boys, the debutante nicknamed 'Minty Hardcore' is - long after being forced into a rather rigorous local convent - now just another East End legend, alongside the Krays and Jack the Ripper.Meanwhile, Jack Woodfield, Barking barrow boy turned bourgeois beefcake, is desperate to ditch West Ham United, the Lintons estate, and especially his belligerent baby brother Jamie. It's time for Jack to take his savvy to the City; no more legends about being baptised in a 'testosterone spring'; of past uncles and their paranormal romances; of 'entities from Essex' and 'doomed debutantes'; pure rot, as far as Jack is concerned. He wants to make himself into the modern, metrosexual man his mum would be so proud of. In fact, you might say that Jack Woodfield has it sorted; he's got brains, brawn, and sightly bulges. He's a modern man with a lad's legacy that's best left behind, and that also includes his carousing cousin, Hayden 'the lad' Woodfield. But over Jack's shoulder lurks the frisky phantom who has Hayden in her clutches, and whose paranormal passion for burly barrow boys might well screw up Jack's prospects for promotion and a cosmopolitan, carefree existence rather royally...