To be published ((TBA)). My first Crime Thriller!

About the book 

Soho Warrior is the story of Alex, whose best friend is found stabbed to death in a notorious gay cruising area of London.

This is the late 1990s and the London gay scene is being stalked by a killer. Determined to find him, Karate man Alex joins the homophobic gang he suspects of the murders to unearth the evidence the police prefer not to seek.

In the tawdry glitter of the gay clubs, pubs, streets of Soho and in the wild places of outdoor cruising, Alex finds himself facing his demons and battling for his soul.

How did the Book come about?

I was walking along the riverfront in Putney one night and a man I knew well from teaching came staggering towards me, badly beaten up. He begged me not to call the police or an ambulance. He had been gay cruising on the Putney Towpath when he was approached by a homophobic gang who punched, kicked and robbed him before leaving him for dead.

We didn’t call the police. As a teacher in a Christian girls’ school he feared for his job if his sexual adventures became public knowledge. I took him to my flat, tended to his injuries and drove him home, seething with fury at the monsters who had attacked him.

I was a Karate obsessive in those days. (I still am, tbh) I was a brown belt, trained at least three times a week with the world-famous Enoeda Sensei at the Marshall Street Dojo in Soho. Brown Belts are feisty! It’s the most fighty of the nine grades to Black, in my opinion. At Brown, all you want to do is prove yourself, test yourself, fight at any and every opportunity. Yes I know. Karate is all about defence, sure I understand that, now I am a Black Belt 3rd Dan in Karate, 5th Dan in Martial Arts.

That’s now. Then, I grabbed my nunchuck the very next night and headed to the towpath to find and mash the bastards. Fortunately for my career and my ego, they weren’t there.

So instead I wrote a novel in which facts and wish-fulfilment, woven in with a little autobiography combine like blood, guts and bone. Including funny-bone, of course.

Once the book was written I decided never to publish it, because I was also a teacher in a Christian girls’ school and feared for my job due to Section 28. Publishing a book which presented gay life in a positive light would certainly have resulted in getting me into trouble or even fired.

Now I am out of that profession and Section 28 is history, I can finally publish this story.

Soho Warrior  is published by The Conrad Press and can be ordered from Amazon and all good bookshops from August 5th.

FOR A SIGNED COPY AT HALF PRICE (FREE POSTAGE IN THE UK – ALL OTHER TERRITORIES ADD £5.00) EMAIL ME johnelkon@yahoo.co.uk. Payment Paypal only please. Orders received before 5th August ONLY get the HALF PRICE offer!

Note: (Wikipedia) Section 28 or Clause 28was a legislative designation for a series of laws across Britain that prohibited the “promotion of homosexuality” by local authorities. Introduced by Margaret Thatcher‘s Conservative government, it was in effect from 1988 to 2000 in Scotland and from 1988 to 2003 in England and Wales. It caused many organisations such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender student support groups to close, limit their activities or self-censor.