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3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting Context, April 23, 2004
As a mystery, this book comes off as rather ordinary. A boy exiting the Carib club is run down by a taxi, and that initiates
an investigation into the local drug scene. The investigation
plays out against the context of a drab, failing high-rise housing project where the misery is compounded by both official
indifference and the influx of more and more illegal drugs.
The regular police forces are warned off by superiors who claim
the whole matter is being handled by their special drug squad; the reporter who is quite interested, partly because her grandmother is living in that area, is then forced into assignments of a quite mundane nature, and she too is told the
paper's regular crime reporter is handling it.
And then nothing much seems to be happening on either front, so
both the police officer and the reporter, who conveniently are
living together, begin pursuing their own leads.
Then part of the official disinterest in the area seems to be
part of an official plan to tear down the whole complex and replace it with private housing--virtually none of which will
be affordable to the people being displaced. And there is a lot
of money, both government and private, involved, and some questions then arise about that money's distribution. Some few
people seem to be ready to benefit more than their outward
contribution suggests. And both the reporter and the local cop
both know that where there is a lot of money involved, there is
a good chance of illegal activities.
The story isn't bad, but the author presents the dialogue in
heavily accented Yorkshire dialect, with local spellings, and
this will be difficult for most Americans to follow. If anyone
thinks "English is English," this book will prove otherwise.
The story is therefore rather difficult to follow at times. This telling doesn't move with ease.
But very interesting for many readers will be to learn that the
modern England is far different from that we have in mind and
what we usually encounter in our mystery reading. Part of the story concerns the strong racial strife prevelent in many parts
of England now, where various racial groups hate and distrust
each other, and such racial difficulties lead to violence and
lawbreaking on a fairly grand scale.
Such racial conflict, and it's terrible effects on the whole of
society, is especially interesting because at the time of racial
trouble in the U.S. during the late '60s, British writers always
acted so superior by suggesting that racial strife was a direct
result of the ignorance and prejudice of the Americans. The same writers always glowed with perverse pride in what they felt
was their superior ability to be free of prejudice in England.
But that was still in the time when there were few foreigners
living in England, and their population shared the same history
and values.
Then, Britain opened their doors to considerable immigration from parts of their former empire, and the inland was flooded
with people from Pakistan and Jamaica and other islands, as
well as some parts of Africa, and then their racial unrest began. And it continues to this day.
This book hints at the problems the police have with trying to
bring into their ranks members of minorities, who all arrive with different cultural values and prejudices. So racial problems continue to grow there.
The author points out, in her story, some of the difficulties
when the Asians, mainly muslim Pakistanis, react strongly against the loud music and drug culture brought into the country
by those from Jamaica, and gangs of each form to fight the other. And the police have to especially monitor their Pakistani Constable who is facing charges of racial prejudice
by a musician from Jamaica.
These aren't pleasant subjects, but they are prevalant in many
places, and the author does a nice job of pointing out some of
those problems, so those ideas make this a book worth reading.
But the insistence on telling the story in a regional dialect
rather detracts from the whole story.
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