"Life! Death! Prizes!" is a reference to those magazines like Take-a-Break that have competitions in them alongside sensationalist stories of life and death, e.g. a normally quiet father killing family with rifles, or in a huge fire or something, because of some debts he'd built up.
And these are the magazines that the lead character, 19-year-old Billy Smith, enjoys.
The book starts with death, a funeral, and almost ends in death too, which would have been an ultra sad ending to the novel - luckily though the author adds a late twist and there is a happy ending.
The book follows Billy after he has lost his mum who was killed by Aidan Jebb. It is now just him and his 6-year-old brother in a house, on their own and he doesn't cope all that well with the situation all the time. It doesn't help that Aidan Jebb, his mum's killer, seems to be following him about.
The book also takes satirical looks at the way society is in England, and wider in the world through Billy playing the computer game Empire, but mainly I think this book is about how those "Life! Death! Prizes!" can pollute your mind a little. At least that's what I got out of it.
The novel is a bit quirky, quite interesting and may be worth a look especially if you like society issues.
(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)
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