A cult hardboiled noir classic of crime, punishment and the search for a meaningful life, with an Introduction by Stuart Evers‘Tough and vital … Hard Rain Falling roars through dim Western streets like an articulate Hells Angel looking for a fight’ The New York TimesWhen small-time teenage criminal Jack Levitt becomes friends with Billy Lancing, a young Black pool hustler, neither imagines they will meet again years later in St Quentin Prison – or that only one of them will make it out.But what does freedom really mean if you can’t escape the hand life has always dealt you?Don Carpenter’s shocking, poignant novel is a story of crime, punishment and trying to make sense of it all; of being down, but never quite out. ‘Explosive … Tarmac-tough dialogue and road-novel delinquent action is customised with a tender intensity … Carpenter brings gold to the grit’ Boyd Tonkin, Independent‘A unique read; violent, tender, inexorable, and melancholic … The small lives contained herein are indelible’ Richard Price