Memoirs of a Dipper

dipper‘There’s different ways to do it: I can slowly move closer step by step, or I can do it in one movement and bump into them. Easiest is in a pub then I can put my drink too close to theirs. Move my stool near theirs. Anything to cross the line.’

Gary is a dipper, a burglar, a thief. He is still at junior school when his father first takes him out on the rob, and proves a fast learner: not much more than a child the first time he gets caught, he is a career criminal as soon as he is out again. But Gary is also fiercely intelligent – he often knows more about the antique furniture he is stealing than the people who own it, and is confident in his ability to trick his way out of any situation, always one step ahead. But all that changes when he falls for Mandy…

Praise for Memoirs of a Dipper

Embodies an authenticity more common in non-fiction…short but powerful.
Sunday Telegraph

Gary’s first-person narration grabs us by the collar and drags us through his tale of a life, from childhood to middle-age, on the underbelly of society. Leyshon brilliantly renders his voice, which is forcible, baldly honest, intimate and often blackly funny . . . This is a book full of important questions, and I applaud Leyshon for asking them.
Guardian

Gary is an unusually candid and beguiling narrator
Independent

Vivid . . . brilliant . . . [Gary] is a captivating narrator . . . Leyshon has not painted a pretty picture, but it’s hard to look away.
Financial Times

Memoirs of a Dipper is largely based on Leyshon’s conversations with real-life former prisoners and addicts…the dialogue is strong and Gary’s voice taut throughout.
Sunday Times

A reading experience that hums with an electric energy that never gets boring and feels shockingly, painfully real.
The Times