Driven

by Andrea Badenoch

On a hot city night, Jaz is celebrating her twenty-first birthday with her friends Trace and Harm. Across town, her boyfriend, Fat Andy, is lying dead on their bed, his throat savagely cut. Jaz is convinced that the murder was down to Vinny, a crooked car dealer for whom Fat Andy worked. And she's not prepared to let him get away with it.

Genres: Fiction

368 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2000

About the author

Died of breast cancer aged 52, Andrea Badenoch had studied and taught literature for much of her life, but came late to writing. Once embarked on her new career, she wrote a book a year until 2002.
She was born on Tyneside, then moved to Leeds. She was educated at Leeds Girls' High School and read literature at Manchester University, taking an MA in American literature from London University. Literature and feminism were central to her life: from her work with a south London women's writing project in the late 1970s to her more recent role at the centre of a group of women writers in Newcastle. She co-edited the journal Writing Women for six years, helping to oversee its two anthologies, The Virago Book of Writing Women (1998 and 1999).

Reviews

[Shell · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't think of anything to recommend this book.
How many times does the author have to push the fact that the protagonist is like a little girl, looking like a small teenager, then have her act as an experienced prostitute and completely outsmart and toy with the hardest criminal gangs in town. Sorry, just doesn't work for me at all.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book seemed to me to have been written by someone quite young, possibly a first, one-off novel until, curious, I checked out Andrea Badenoch and discovered that was not so at all. Relentlessly told from the point of view of Jaz, albeit some in flashback, it nevertheless powered through myriad misunderstandings and mishaps and kept me reading to the end. Probably a 3.6 stars rather than a 4, and not a writer I'd seek out in a hurry, it was nevertheless enjoyable.

[Driekie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not too bad.