Backlash by
Roderic Duncan
hbk out July 03
Published by Simon Schuster
at £17.99
A first novel about ethnic problems in policing, based in Leicester. I read a
generally similar book not long ago, sited in one of the Yorkshire towns, but
this was written from a different standpoint. The central figure is a woman
mixed-race police-inspector named Marjorie Akanbai, known as 'Mo'. She is
a Community Relations Officer , whose main job seems to be smoothing the
ruffled waters caused by her heavier-handed colleagues. She has just ended
an affair with another Inspector, Paresh Gupta, when she is plunged into a
riot situation caused by a dismembered pig being planted in a local mosque.
The ethnic tensions accelerate and it becomes clear that they are being
orchestrated from outside Leicester. However, Mo herself becomes the
target of complaints and the murder of a prominent Muslim racks up the
heat.
Now attempts are being made on both her reputation and then her very life,
the disturbing feature being that it may being coming from within her own
force. An international conference on race relations is to be held in Leicester
within days, at which Tony Blair is to present new proposals on
immigration, and the hate campaign is obviously designed to de-rail this
important meeting. The scene changes to Mid-Wales, where a coven of
white supremacists are discovered, but now Mo is actually on the run, both
from her attackers and from her own colleagues.
A well-written book, which hots up as the chapters accumulate and though
the usual suspension of disbelief is needed here and there, it is a gripping
story. I dislike the increasing fad for writing the whole text in the present
tense... 'I get up... I open the door ... Jack is standing there'....which may
be what some of the 'writing schools' are peddling these days, but this apart,
it is a book worth reading.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Backlash by
Roderic Duncan
