Whatever Gets You Through the Night cover art

Whatever Gets You Through the Night

'Loud, bright, fast and funny - a perfect read' Guardian

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Whatever Gets You Through the Night

By: Charles Higson
Narrated by: Charles Higson
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About this listen

 'Higson's new book will certainly get you through the night, though you may not get a lot of sleep...' Mark Billingham

'Terrific' The i
'Loud, bright, fast and funny - a perfect read' Guardian
'Hugely entertaining' Sunday Times
'A slick satirical thriller' The Sun

Most people travel to Corfu to escape the real world for a couple of weeks. But not McIntyre. McIntyre's a fixer, specialising in getting people out of places they don't want to be with the minimum of fuss, publicity and violence. The job in Corfu should be easy - spring Lauren, a 15-year-old schoolgirl, from the luxury compound of the tech billionaire, Julian Hepworth. Hepworth's young, handsome and charismatic - he's also a suspected paedophile.

But as McIntyre sets up his operation, things quickly start to slip out of control. Soon, he has to contend with Albanian gangsters, Greek drug dealers, psychotic bodyguards, flat earthers and spoilt, wealthy teenagers looking for dangerous kicks. Everything converges on a glamorous summer party at Hepworth's spectacular villa; can McIntyre play the different factions off against each other and get Lauren to safety without things going horribly wrong?©2022 Charles Higson Crime Fiction Suspense Fiction Heartfelt Crime

Critic reviews

Charlie Higson coming back to the world of adult thrillers is a major event. And what a comeback. Higson's new thriller will certainly get you through the night, though you may not get a lot of sleep... (Mark Billingham)
A hugely enjoyable sun-soaked thriller: hard-edged but warm, tense but funny, vividly ultra-modern and yet deliciously old-fashioned (Christopher Brookmyre)
Whatever Gets You Through the Night marks the return to adult fiction of Charlie Higson. Set on the sun-soaked island of Corfu, it dives into the darkness beneath the surface of the Mediterranean idyll.
'...the links between these components tighten in a richly satisfying way, until the book reaches an exhilarating extended climax at a spectacular party thrown by Hepworth to show everyone how great he is...'
This hectic, helter-skelter thriller is what his adult fans have been waiting for all this time
Rather more upbeat, and with far better weather, is Charlie Higson's return to crime fiction for grownups. . . It's loud, bright, fast and funny - a perfect read for a dreary month. (Laura Wilson)
Higson is a terrific thriller writer. . . Tense yet funny, too
A triumphant return to adult fare from the Young Bond author. (Barry Forshaw)
[Higson's] exuberant novel pulls off the Hiaasen trick of absorbing dark themes yet remaining a hugely entertaining read
Higson, author of the Young Bond kids' books, makes a fresh, funny return to adult themes with this slick satirical thriller.
The chaotic and exciting denouement is brilliantly executed and funny... Higson is so good at what he does
Delivers the atmosphere of a classic Sixties thriller in a contemporary setting, peering into the dark underbelly of a sunny Med holiday spot (Books of the Year)
All stars
Most relevant
Love Charlie Higson’s voice and the characters are distinct despite the number of them! Great story and found myself stopping everything I was doing as I was engrossed in the action!

Brilliant Thriller

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Really enjoyed listening to this thriller. Solid, great plot, interesting characters, removed based me of Charlie's books from the 90s which I also loved.

Really enjoyable thriller

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Hilarious, exhilarating story. Satirical and yet so close to reality and modern life. Every character has a dark side, but also a human side. Just people trying to get by in a messed-up world. Truth stranger than fiction, hard to know when to laugh or cry.

Higson tackles everything from flat-earthers to island drug culture, Greece’s financial crisis to sexism, religious fanaticism to sexual abuse. They are all here, cleverly wrapped up in a darkly humorous and hilarious satire with no holds barred.

Funny, outrageous and heartfelt

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I had hoped for so much from this title; I love Higson's Young Bond books, which are fast-paced page-turners with well-developed characters and plots.

Sadly Whatever Gets You Through The Night is far from that; the characters are a sequence of stereotypes - the powerful man with a penchant for young girls, the Eastern European thugs, the token 'black' girl angry at being judged by her skin colour, the desperate alcoholic father trying to make things better too late. Nothing novel or exciting.

The story is a mess - too many people, too little happening - and I'm sorry to say, but the author's limited voices don't help. By the end of chapter 5 I'd had enough. I couldn't follow who was doing what, where loyalties lay or even the basic premise of the story. A rare return to Audible I'm afraid.

Cliches followed by stereotypes

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The lead character was the bad guy as far as I can tell and I really struggled to track the protagonists journey, I must have missed something. Often diverts into thinly veiled essays and debunking internet movements, which I agree with entirely but was a distraction. I really like the Author but probably for thier comedy work and I doubt that much conciliation here but I found it to be quite without humour.

Quite Joyless

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