In the seedy bars and high-society soirées of 1950s London, the city's most influential players are up to no good.

Jude and Donald, cut-throat co-owners of an advertisement distributor, are after a magazine to grow their media empire. When MP Peter Morrison attempts to block their takeover, what begins as a benign - if brutish - business dealing soon spirals into a ruthless Machiavellian plot of fraud, boozing, blackmail, adultery and sudden death.

Shot through with the blackest of humours, The Rich Pay Late paints an appalling, enthralling image of the city at its greediest - one that feels uncomfortably accurate today.

'There's a magnificence about Simon Raven... He has the pen of an angel and the mind of a devil.' Stephen Fry

'Cracking entertainment... Dangerously, deliciously addictive' Daily Telegraph

'[Raven is] a freak writer, he defies classification. In wilder moments he suggests a loose, lunatic collaboration of Trollope, Ouida and Waugh' Observer