Gripping . . . Deeply moving . . . A love letter to London, seething with outrage, that leads you keen to read its planned sequels -- Mark Sanderson * The Times *

White Riot: The Sunday Times Thriller of the Month : Thomas White Riot: The Sunday Times Thriller of the Month : Thomas

Hotjar sets this cookie to identify a new user’s first session. It stores a true/false value, indicating whether it was the first time Hotjar saw this user. In 1983 Noble is sent to Stoke Newington where a young man has died in suspicious circumstances and he is tasked with investigating the death.I’m glad I did read the way through. It’s frightening to see how far we have not come. How little has really changed and how still the government is essentially the same no matter who’s at the head of it. Thomas’s fiction draws on archive material, testimonies and newspaper reports from 1978-83, in particular the events surrounding the unsolved killings of two men of colour in east London. Through the stories of Altab Ali, who was stabbed to death in Whitechapel, and Colin Roach, who allegedly shot himself in Stoke Newington police station, White Riot unfolds as a propulsive crime novel. Thomas ably captures local community anger, interracial tensions and especially the foreboding atmosphere around anti-fascist marches that led to violent clashes with NF skinheads and thuggish Special Patrol Group police. In the melee, there’s the “thump of bats on slabs of meat, the crunch of deadened limb, of nose and cheek, and broken glass”. A timely, powerful and gorgeously readable novel that represents everything that is good and important about the crime fiction genre' Irish Times

White Riot by Joe Thomas | Goodreads White Riot by Joe Thomas | Goodreads

It covers a lot of hard hitting subjects and it does this very well. No over the top sensationalising, well, to be honest, it was brutal enough without! Declan Burke is an author and journalist. His current novel is The Lammisters (No Alibis Press) Declan Burke I learnt a lot reading this book, and feel that the author did a superb job of blending real life events/ history with his fictional storylines. All the characters in this novel are interesting and engaging and I really liked how we switch from one POV to another frequently (something I don’t usually like in a novel but that worked SO well for this story, trust me)! The prose style felt fresh and unique and the pacing was honestly phenomenal. I literally flew through this book, I could barely put it down. The story itself is decent enough and was made interesting for me because it covers history that I lived through. The book is the first of a trilogy. I suspect that, if the non-sentences and trip details were removed, the trilogy would make one good book.If you're interested in the era and specifically the music, politics, corruption and racism, then don't hesitate. I can't wait to read the rest of the trilogy. It’s written in an extremely unique voice - somewhat difficult at times , i did toy with not finishing it once or twice but I continued on to the end. One of the main things I will take from reading this book, and this is why I think it will do well and become an important read, is that comparing the 70s and 80s with the now, it appears that not much has really changed, and that's very sad. The novel segues into an extended character study of Viviana, “a mixed-race woman who doesn’t bow her head in submission”, as de Campos explores Brazilian attitudes to race, class, prostitution and women. It’s a classic bait-and-switch: having lured us into the story with a conventional tale of a reluctant amateur sleuth, de Campos delivers a polemic against patriarchal privilege that somehow believes, despite perpetrating “crimes of kidnap, assault, false imprisonment, attempted femicide and some others”, that it is still entitled to justice. Death in Heels offers a fresh take on the traditional murder mystery. The drag queens bitchily refer to Fi as “Hagatha Christie” when she starts investigating Eve’s death. The novel is at its strongest when Murphy is exploring identities in flux, especially the contrasts between the drag queens’ public personas and their private selves (some of the queens, of course, can’t help but be fabulous in or out of costume). A dramatic gear-change near the end delivers a rather improbable Hollywood ending, but otherwise Death in Heels is a charming first offering in the “Dublin Drag Mystery Series”.

Thomas • City, University of London Dr Joseph Thomas • City, University of London

This book started off well for me. I enjoyed the bit of a trip down memory lane that it took me on. Being a child of the 80s and interested in the politics of the era as I am. The writing is vibrant and rhythmic with the book difficult to put down to the point you find your eyes drooping yelling out for sleep. The power of Trade Unions, the police and the corruption therein, racism and the National Front are all explored throughout, but the book never weights heavy or gets too dramatic. There’s also the fun of real life musical figures littered throughout with Suzi’s boyfriend playing the role of fictional producer to many of them.One of the things I did like about the book was the way that the author managed to weave fiction into fact almost seamlessly. The story the book is telling is set firmly within the era and all that happened therein. A lot of the characters are real people and have been portrayed, to the best of my knowledge, with good accuracy. The political landscape has also been (again to my knowledge and experience) faithfully presented, in all its brutal reality. Warts and all. The first part of a proposed United Kingdom Trilogy, White Riot is a timely, powerful and gorgeously readable novel that represents everything that is good and important about the crime fiction genre.