A Novel

I recently read a novel describing a clash between two gangs, apparently drawn from the English criminal class. The narrator, a rather vacuous fellow, is not the leader but in some sense the focus of one gang. His associates are, for the most part, dissolute wastrels who evolve an assortment of impractical plots in the pursuit of banal if not trivial ends. They go on a criminal rampage involving blackmail (extending, in one case, to outright extortion), vandalism, theft, and assault. That they eventually achieve their goals is due primarily to one gangmember who, though as amoral as the rest, appears to have a reasonably powerful intellect, and secondarily to the ineptitude of their (equally criminal) opponents.

( What is it? )