ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – Ten Pound Note by Russ Barr

Ten Pound Note is independently published by Russ Barr and is available now. My thanks to the author for the review copy.

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London, 1995. Twelve lives. One ten-pound note. A gritty, darkly comic journey through the city’s underbelly.

Fresh from the mint, the note is almost ordinary. Almost. A tiny printing anomaly has left the Queen appearing to wink, as if she knows something the rest of us do not.

A gangster with a secret. A crooked policeman. A stripper. A drug dealer. A child. As the tenner changes hands, it passes between people trying to get by, get ahead or simply get through the day.

None of them keep it for long. But each leaves a mark.

Their encounters seem accidental. Their lives seem worlds apart. Yet as the note moves through London, hidden connections begin to emerge between people who should never have found each other.

Ten Pound Note is a novel about bad decisions, unexpected kindness and the fragile possibility of redemption, told through the people a city overlooks.

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Ten Pound Note has a quirky premise at its heart. A rogue tenner is printed which gives the impression the Queen is winking and smirking. We don’t often scrutinise our notes so this one manages to make quite the journey without being spotted.

The story is set in the 1990s, presumably to ensure that the use of cash is still prevalent. We follow the note as it travels through twelve lives, none of them particularly happy ones, but ones with a story to tell. There’s a drug dealer and a stripper, the note is a child’s birthday present, and it finds its way into the hands of a dodgy policeman, amongst others.

This book is easy to read and flows well. It’s quite gritty in places, portraying the harsher sides of life, but yet it still has a lightness of touch to the writing style. The story does rely on a couple of handy coincidences to move it along but I didn’t mind that, particularly as the last one makes for a really satisfying ending. I thought it was a slice of life story with a difference.

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Russ Barr has spent over twenty-five years working in the technology industry, all the while harbouring a desire to put his overactive imagination to better use. His debut novel, War Inc., was written over the course of fourteen years and finally self-published in 2025.

A lifelong reader, Russ has a particular love of post-apocalyptic fiction, sci-fi and anything with humour and heart. He plans to explore a range of genres in future books, and may yet scratch his long-standing zombie itch.

He lives in the south-east of England with his wife, three children and a dog.