Punk rock blew everything away including Cal Carter’s life and Frankie Dane’s soul.
1978: Cal Carter strides onto the post punk rock scene with an easy grin. Beatle fringed, Elvis obsessed, he and sidekick Frankie Dane are hailed the Lennon and McCartney of the new wave. Within two years he’s dead from an overdose, the band disintegrating…
Today Frankie Dane is a shining star, cooler than Carter ever was. But still he’s haunted by the death of the best friend he’ll ever have. And needing to catch up with the past before it catches up with him.
Jim Pollard’s first novel reads like a thriller, it has pace, bite and great humour. It turns the music industry, punk rock and growing up inside out.
But it’s a book about frailty as much as fame; about a man coming to terms with who he is, with the values of friendship, his own vulnerability and search for self-expression. Merciless yet honest.
This sparky but tender novel is cut with humour – a sex and drugs and rock and roll mystery that takes friendship, fame and the 1970’s gently apart.
Rotten in Denmark was shortlisted for an Amazon.co.uk bursary for new writers.
‘Nailing perfectly what it was like to be a young music-obsessed kind in the 70s… depth and narrative trust.’ Andy Basire
‘Strong storytelling with surprising twists; a true portrayal of friendship and rivalry.’ Jane Rogers
‘Funny and fast-moving. A talented new writer: one to watch.’ Mark Illis
Full Amazon Review:
‘The year is 1978, the place is Beech Park, Southeast London, and punk is all the rage. Frankie Dane teams up with his rich, vertically challenged school friend Cal Carter to form the Go-Karts. The two are “hailed by the critics as the bards of the new wave”, Dane playing “the supposed new McCartney to his new Lennon”, whilst Carter binges on sex and drugs as their single Rotten in Denmark tops the charts. Within two years Cal is dead of an overdose, and Dane looks back over 20 years to tell the unfinished story of the Go-Karts and his relationship with Carter, who has subsequently become enshrined as one of rock’s icons.
‘Rotten in Denmark is Jim Pollard’s first novel, a funny and assured story of Carter and Dane, growing up amidst dreams of rock stardom in late 1970s’ London. Pollard has a wonderful ear for the world of pubs, drugs, gigs, acne and adolescent sex that runs throughout the book, as Frankie Dane negotiates his way into middle age and marriage to Cal’s sister. Frankie tries to write an autobiography rather than an album in his middle age, in a bid to say “all the things I wish I’d said to Cal before he died”. However, Rotten in Denmark is more than just punk nostalgia. As the novel unfolds, both Frankie and Cal are not quite what they seem, and there’s a neat twist in the final pages of this promising first novel.’ Jerry Brotton