BOOKS
You must read a Rippington.
Hard-boiled British gangland crime. Psychological suspense. Dangerous loyalties. Complicated families. And twists that refuse to play nicely.
Whether you’re entering the Boxer Boys world for the first time or looking for your next Nick Rippington thriller, this is where to start.
Where should I start?
Clearing the Table
I want the newest boxer boys thriller
Crossing the Whitewash
I want to begin the boxer boys story
The Jagged Scar
Take me to 1970s soho
Rabette Run
Give me a standalone psychological thriller
The Boxer Boys
More than fifty years. One family. Plenty of trouble.
BOXER BOYS #1
Crossing the Whitewash
You can leave the gang. But can you ever really leave your past?
Thirteen-year-old Gary Marshall discovers how unforgiving life can be when knife-wielding thugs try to steal his bike.
His unlikely rescuer is Arnie Dolan — a streetwise local hard case accompanied by his dog Stevo.
The boys form a close friendship and create their own gang: the Boxer Boys.
But Gary has ambitions beyond the streets. His talent for sport offers him a possible escape when he gets the chance to trial with a professional football club.
As their paths begin to separate, turmoil at home draws Gary back towards Arnie — and towards a night that changes both of their lives forever.
A street fight ends with a man dead.
Years later, Arnie comes looking for his former best friend.
Gary has built another life. He has another name.
And he has very good reasons for wanting the past to stay exactly where he left it.
Crossing the Whitewash launched the Boxer Boys series and received an honourable mention in the Writer’s Digest Self-Published eBook Awards. (Apple)
“Evocative, original, unfailingly precise and often humorous.”
Writer’s Digest eBook judges
BOXER BOYS #2 — THE PREQUEL
Spark Out
One brother is a gangster. One is a soldier. War is about to change both their lives.
London, 1982.
Maurice “Big Mo” Dolan has ambitions.
Tired of living in the shadow of his career-criminal father and determined to drag his own family out of poverty, Mo decides petty crime isn’t going to get him where he wants to be.
He needs to think bigger. Much bigger.
A warehouse raid gives him access to the weapons he needs to move into armed robbery and begin establishing himself as a serious criminal force.
But while Mo fights the police, his family and his own vicious temper on the streets of London, his younger brother Clive is preparing for another battle.
Britain is going to war in the Falklands. And Clive is going with it.
As one brother pursues power at home and the other fights for survival thousands of miles away, their two worlds move towards a collision that will shape the Dolan family for generations.
Spark Out is the Boxer Boys prequel, taking readers back to the family history behind Crossing the Whitewash. It received recognition including a Chill With A Book Readers’ Award and Cover of the Year. (indieBRAG)
BOXER BOYS #3
Dying Seconds
A savage murder. A killer on the loose. And two former friends forced back together. Arnie Dolan is back.
But this time he’s in a wheelchair.
Ousted from his gang and seemingly removed from the top of the criminal underworld, Arnie’s glory days appear to be behind him.
Anyone who knows Arnie knows better.
Meanwhile, life is finally looking good for his former best friend Gareth Prince.
Gareth has built a legitimate career as a sports journalist, earned a promotion and an award, and created a new life with girlfriend Anjie and her son Max.
Most importantly, it is a life without Arnie. Then tragedy strikes.
A brutal murder rocks both men’s worlds and forces them into an uneasy alliance to discover who is responsible.
Their search takes them into increasingly hostile territory as political tensions surrounding Brexit intensify and football violence erupts on the streets of Marseille.
Old loyalties resurface. Old assumptions begin to crumble.
And the deeper Gareth and Arnie dig, the more they are forced to question everything they thought they knew.
The plot above is based on the published description for Dying Seconds. (Everand)
BOXER BOYS #4
Bare Lies
Trouble follows the Dolans all the way to Spain.
Chuck Dolan and his younger brother Sly are determined to prove there is a new gang in town.
Then a raid on a rival drug dealer’s nightclub goes disastrously wrong.
With four people dead and the police searching for answers, the brothers need to disappear.
Fast.
They are smuggled out of Britain and sent to stay with their legendary criminal grandfather Billy “The Kid” Dolan on Spain’s Costa Blanca.
At first Billy looks like an ageing gangster quietly enjoying retirement in the sun.
That illusion doesn’t last long.
His business associates include a murderous Colombian cartel boss and a former Irish paramilitary with a taste for extreme violence.
Chuck must juggle Billy’s increasingly erratic demands with his hopes of building a future with Abby, the love of his life, with whom he has recently reconnected.
Sly is taking increasingly dangerous risks.
And something buried in Billy’s past is beginning to surface.
Something capable of threatening the brothers, the people they love and the entire future of the Dolan family.
This reflects the currently published synopsis for Bare Lies. (The Alliance Independent Authors)
BOXER BOYS #5
Clearing the Table
One slip up and his girl pays the price.
Sly Dolan is a leading figure in the Boxer Boys organisation.
But nothing prepares him for the call that changes everything.
Crystal has been kidnapped.
Her captors want £20 million.
And Sly has just discovered that Crystal is the daughter he never knew existed.
Her mother is Naomi, the woman he loved more than twenty years earlier when he and Chuck were hiding out in Spain.
Naomi cannot pay the ransom.
Neither can Sly — at least not without getting creative.
He doesn’t control the gang’s money and time is running out.
The solution he finds is dangerous and will mean turning against his own family while attempting to outmanoeuvre his dying father.
But there is something else Sly hasn’t understood.
The kidnappers appear to want more than money.
And whatever game they are playing threatens to take everything from him.
Out 26 September 2026
BOXER BOYS SPIN-OFF
The Jagged Scar
1970s Soho. Sleaze, power and secrets that kill.
Troubled schoolgirl Red travels to London with her best friend Marc for a Valentine’s party.
Then they become separated.
Before the night is over, Red is sitting in a police cell.
There she meets mysterious glamour girl Kat, who helps negotiate her release and introduces her to a very different London.
This is 1970s Soho.
Strip clubs. Porn shops. Gangsters. Bent coppers. Nightclubs. Money. Power.
Unhappy with the life waiting for her back in Wales, Red decides to stay.
She finds work inside the nightclub empire of former stripper Blaize and her powerful husband Jack and, for a while, believes she has found somewhere she belongs.
Then a series of tragedies shatters her new world.
Red starts asking questions.
The answers bring her to the attention of some of London’s most dangerous players — men with secrets to protect and no hesitation about silencing anyone who gets too close.
And the truth Red eventually uncovers connects the world she ran away from with the one she has entered.
They were never separate stories at all.
Published descriptions confirm Red’s arrival in London, Kat, Blaize and Jack and the 1970s Soho setting. (The Alliance Independent Authors)
A STANDALONE PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER
Rabette Run
How do you escape when your own mind tells you everyone is watching?
Emerson Rabette has a phobia about travelling on underground trains.
Normally, he can structure his life around avoiding them.
Then a car accident leaves him with no choice.
A middle-aged graphic designer and father, Emerson desperately needs to reach an important business meeting.
His future depends on it.
To get there, he must confront the London Underground — and one of his greatest fears.
His obsessive-compulsive rituals quickly attract the irritation of other passengers until a young woman called Winter steps in to help him.
But once aboard, Emerson becomes increasingly convinced that people are watching him.
A soldier.
A woman wearing a hat covered in artificial fruit.
A man with a purple goatee.
Is his paranoia taking over?
Or is something genuinely wrong?
Then Emerson spots a message scrawled inside the train.
Four words:
RUN RABETTE RUN.
And he does.
What follows sends Emerson down a psychological rabbit hole in which working out who to trust may be the only way to survive.
The plot is based on the published book description. (The Eclectic Review)
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