This is a work of narrative non-fiction based on the last days of the fugitive Raoul Moat, a Geordie bodybuilder and mechanic who became nationally notorious in Britain one hot summer's week when, after killing his ex-girlfriend's new lover, shooting her in the stomach, and blinding a policeman, he disappeared into the woods of Northumberland, evading discovery for seven days - even when TV tracker Ray Mears was employed by the police to find him. Bizarrely, alcoholic ex-England footy star Paul 'Gazza' Gascoigne also played a role, trying to get a fishing rod and a chicken to Moat by taxi. Eventually, cornered by the police, Moat shot himself. Andrew Hankinson, a journalist and a Geordie, tells Moat's story in the second person, which means that the reader is uncomfortably close at all times to Raoul Moat. It is a reading experience unrelieved by authorial distance or omniscient interpretation. Everything comes from Moat's mind - from his recordings and writings - and the narrative Hankinson has woven is compelling, even if Moat's sentimentality, suspicion, and self-pity are never far from sight. This is a narrative in the great tradition of Norman Mailer or Hunter S. Thompson - or, given its North-of-England flavour, Gordon Burn or David Peace.