Nick's Blues — John Harvey

Four days after Nick Harman's seventh birthday, his father climbed onto a bridge high above four lanes of traffic, paused, then threw himself to his death on the road below. Nine years later, Nick lives with his mother on a tough housing estate in North London. On his sixteenth birthday, his mother gives him a box of things left by his father all those years ago. The contents lead Nick to try and discover what led his father from being a successful blues singer to the point where he took his own life. Against a background of shifting allegiances involving the violent gangs on the estate and Nick's first serious involvement with a girl, he is forced to come to terms not only with who his father was, but who he is himself.