It is 1981 and Detective Inspector Henry Hobbes is still reeling in the aftermath of the fire and fury of the Brixton riots. The battle lines of society - and the police force - are being redrawn on a daily basis.
With the certainties of his life already sorely tested, a brutal murder will shake his beliefs to their very core once more. The manner of the death and its staged circumstances pose many questions to which there are no obvious answers.
To track the murderer, Hobbes must cross boundaries into a subculture hidden beneath the everyday world he thought he knew. His investigation takes him into a twisted reality, which is both seductive and devastating, and asks him the one question he has been dreading: How far will he go in pursuit of the truth?
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*** Disclosure - I received a free advance copy of this book from netgalley in return for an honest review ***
Jeff Noon is a writer of speculative fiction who has been on my reading list for some time (not through recommendation, but through finding his books in discount shops and liking the sound of them). Here he travels somewhat less speculative ground, telling the tale of a murder investigation during the aftermath of the Brixton riots of the early 80s.
The body of Brendan Clarke is found in unusual circumstances, with his face mutilated in certain odd patterns and with no apparent signs of struggle. The investigation into his murder leads the detectives to look into the earlier suicide of a Bowie-esque rock star as the links between the two are too big to ignore. There then follows an investigation into the cult-like group of misfit teenagers set up in Hastings and the cult status of King Lost, aka Lucas Bell.
There is the usual conflict within the investigative team - one jaded, opinionated DS, one DS that is hard-working and reliable and one DC that is off-screen most of the time researching things. An added element is the recent controversy surrounding DI Hobbes, as he recently shopped in his colleagues for battering a young black man in retaliation for the Brixton riots.
The main storyline is good, with enough mystery and emerging evidence to keep the interest. The link in to the past suicide of the cult figure adds an extra element. However it feels Noon went a little too far out of his way to make there a reasonable number of plausible suspects, all of whom are fairly interchangeable if I'm honest (I still can't remember which one of two characters died and which didn't).
It was interesting to read a crime book written about pre-Google times, so there really was a need for more hard work, door-knocking and evidence gathering.
There were some early incongruous events that came across as quite needlessly jarring, for example when someone says they can't remember what someone looked like, it was only a quick glimpse, can't remember anything at all and then somehow when asked about facial markings (apropos of nothing) suddenly remembered a facial tattoo. A couple of instances like that really took me out of the book.
All in all, this was a reasonably well-told crime book with a decent setting, but not exactly a ground-breaking storyline.
Jeff Noon
(Author)
