Jumpin’ Jack Flash: David Litvinoff and the Rock’n’Roll Underworld (Jonathan Cape, 2016)

‘The best debut of the year was surely Keiron Pim’s Jumpin’ Jack Flash (Jonathan Cape), an account of the mesmerically ghastly David Litvinoff, an inspired chancer who scampered between the worlds of art, music and organised crime in the 1960s…’ – Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian, ‘The best biography and autobiography books of 2016’.

‘Pim’s remarkable book pulls from the shadows the story of a man who did his best to leave no trace.’ – Will Hodgkinson, a The Times Book of the Year.

‘Keiron Pim’s Jumpin’ Jack Flash is an outstanding study of a remarkable, but until now wholly elusive figure. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, Pim’s work is the first to bring us the story of David Litvinoff, that real-life Zelig of post-war British bohemia. And via the magnesium flare of his subject’s story, Pim illumines the multifaceted world through which he moved: East End gangsters, Chelsea aristos, Soho artists and Notting Hill hippies. Litvinoff, for so long the missing piece of so many cultural jigsaws, finally gets a story of his own and it’s even more bizarre than one might have hoped. This will be an indispensable read for anyone who appreciates that mad, alluring, myth-filled world.’ – Jonathon Green, author of Days in the Life: Voices from the English Underground

‘Keiron Pim nails it, nails the passing shadow of a life to the deck. The rock’n’roll legend of David Litvinoff is given its definitive account. A considerable work of detection and human sympathy unpicking old myths and making them new.’ – Iain Sinclair

‘Keiron Pim’s Jumpin’ Jack Flash is a kaleidoscopic ride through the acid-fields of Fifties and Sixties London in search of David Litvinoff, a brilliant, desolate, unforgettable yet hard-to-focus gay Jewish grifter. Ironic stereotype and rebel at once, Litvinoff chars the car-crash societies he moves through. Mick Jagger, Lucian Freud and the Kray twins flash past in the throng, all sustained by drugs, sex, art, film and a great deal of rock’n’roll. Litvinoff is dazzling. Pim’s pilgrimage is appropriately and meticulously dazzled.’ – George Szirtes

‘A captivating and prodigiously well-researched account of that legendary 1960s London sub-world where criminality and bohemianism met head-on.’ –D. J. Taylor