CRIME
A policeman lies seriously injured in a Liverpool cellar. Only two little girls know where he is but they're too scared to tell. Time is running out for the policeman. Will the girls get help before it's too late?
Piggy Monk Square is a dark and humorous novel set in 1970's Liverpool; during the period of time that preceded the Toxteth riots.
THRILLER
It describes a world tainted with a deep mistrust and hostility between the local people and the police force. This world is viewed through the eyes of a nine-year-old girl, Rebecca. Rebecca's parents are splitting up. Her best friend, Debbie, has a father who is constantly in and out of prison. Their world is dark, confusing and frequently brutal. The girls sometimes mix reality with fantasy, especially when it comes to coping with what will soon become their terrible secret.
SECRETS
Rebecca and Debbie are playing in the cellar of a derelict house when a policeman catches them. He bullies them and warns them not to return. But this is their favourite place to play and they come back. Unfortunately for them so does the policeman.
The policeman chases the girls, but falls down a ladder and goes 'asleep.' The girls know they shouldn't have been playing there. They have also been taught not to trust the police. They are afraid of getting into trouble, so they leave him. The injured policeman becomes dependent on the 'goodwill' of Rebecca and Debbie whose interpretation of 'helping' him has terrible consequences for them all.
REVIEWS FOR PIGGY MONK SQUARE
'A stunningly well-written novel. I didn't want it to end. Tense, joyous, terrifying, comic, tender, magic and tragic - just like childhood itself.' -Willy Russell
'Piggy Monk Square is unbearably tense and utterly believable. The voice of its young heroine is so beguiling and convincing that you feel that you've met her. And then the story forces you to share her terrible secret. Like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle: illuminating and satisfying.'
-Frank Cottrell Boyce 'Nine-year-old Rebecca, chirpy as her nickname, "Sparra," is the lively narrator of this disturbing child's-eye view of 1970s Toxteth, over which the spectres of poverty and police brutality hang. Her mum and dad quarrel and she hates school, where the sadistic Mr. Shelby hits her for misdemeanors. Sparra and her friend Debbie get their kicks roaming the streets, fighting their arch-enemies Uffo and Lippo, laughing at the drunken antics of crazy Harold and his wife with their dead baby's pram, and running from the man they call Stabber the psycho-killer. Their favourite place is the cellar of a bombed-out house in Piggy Monk Square, but that is spoilt when a scary cop warns them away. The tables are turned when the cop falls into the cellar and lies there injured. The real punch of this slice-of-life tale comes from the appalling isolation of Sparra's childhood. The punch leaves you gasping.' -Rachel Hore - The Guardian 'Capturing the vividness of childhood and the exuberant cadence of Liverpudlian childhood slang. It's a subtle but compulsively readable novel, combining the bittersweet provincial nostalgia of, say, Meera Syal's Anita and Me, with a dark and subversive parable that has echoes of Whistle down the Wind.'
-Laurence Phelan - Independent On Sunday 'A gripping, intriguing page-turner which bears testimony to the craft of Jolliffe...mirrors the first person appeal of the autistic teenager in Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident Of the Dog in the Night Time. Grace's Liverpool childhood has helped her create a truly believable character in her book. It's also laced with some wry scouse humour too.' -Mike Chapple - Daily Post
'Within a very few pages this novel draws you in. Piggy Monk Square deserves success and would certainly make a great film.'
-Maria Ross - Publishing News