A hung-over Tommy is hired to find Melody's flatmate, Natasha. Her last known location was in a hotel bar with her newbie punter. Melody got the thumbs up that the trick was going to be hunky-dory and trotted off to her own gig with a big-time opportunist. Two days and one dead-john Member of Parliament later, no Tasha. In his quest to find the prize, Tommy brushes up against hookers, pimps, junkies, MI-5, bombers, and a neurotic brother, and he babysits his depressed and drinking father. And that isn't even a walk on the wild side for him.

City of Tiny Lights incorporates many of the elements of the Burgess novel: the theme of the state's intervention into the mind of the individual, a youth gang, narration with a pervasive slang dialect, drug use, over-indulgence, violence, sex, treachery, salvation at the hands of the tormented, and self-realization. Many of the scenes are also familiarly orange: attempted murder by kicking with references to music, the leader of the teenage gang being set up to take the fall for a crime, an elderly alcoholic who spouts philosophy, and over-attachment to an exotic melody.

The book also gives the nod to Raymond Chandler, with long-winded rambling sentences of philosophy and moody descriptions, which is the place where Tommy Akhtar and TA Services come in. His surroundings are chaotic and destructive, but he holds his head as high as the Wild Turkey will allow and plows ahead to solve his case and save his friends and family. The noir writing style is not used throughout the book, but is sprinkled sparingly for effect.

A disturbing difference was that I don't remember any swear words in A Clockwork Orange, but City of Tiny Lights is riddled with their skeletons. The author, or perhaps the editor, has chosen to let you know that the characters swear, but graciously protects your sensibilities by only alluding to the words like so: f___k, f____g, c_____s (that last one was tricky). If anyone can tell me what FCUK on the front of a tee shirt means, I'd like to learn. Just like the book, I get the joke; I just don't know why it is funny.