Briggy and Terry (Terror) have been mates since small, but Terror’s distracted and antsy these days. He’s fallen for the best looking girl in school. Caldonia Lake may be pretty but she has a sharp tongue that can and will slice you into pieces.

Briggy, Terror & Caldonia end up in each other’s faces in class then in detention. Terror is keen for Caldonia to be ‘his queen’, but she soon puts him straight. Neither he or Briggy are good at anything. Just Kerb-stain boys wasting time at school, before they get a waste of time job.

Affronted, Terror tells her they are planning to rob the local post office. Briggy can’t believe it, but goes along with things after her stinging words. Maybe they can prove something to her. They aren’t nothing.

She wants in, and it’s actually going to happen. Briggy wants to bail, but is too scared to admit it. Life at home isn’t bright and shiny either. Dad’s out of work. Mum works long hours and his big brother Kingsley is planning his escape from the family asap. He’s tired of all the shouting and arguing.

Thoughts of some money in his pocket for a change, charges up Briggy’s courage and they begin to plan.

Set on a rough housing estate in the UK, this is an unflinching snatch of life of three teens. Bravado, attraction and loyalty spiral these teens into a crime. Slang is rich in their conversation but easy to follow, and their interactions funny if not cutting, as teens can be.

With a surprising ending, and a character revealing a side never shown, Kerb-Stain Boys just may have proved themselves ‘something’ after all.

Author – Alex Wheatle

Dyslexic / Reluctant Reader – Reader Age 9 – Interest Age – Teen

Not for Younger Readers

Read the First Chapter here

(2018, Barrington Stoke, Housing Estates, Friends, School, Robbery, Crime, Family, Poverty, Loyalty, Dyslexic, Dyslexia, Proving yourself, Attraction, Peer Pressure, Secret)