Tangled Web UK Review April 2008
Killer Tune by
Dreda Say Mitchell
pbk out March 08
(Hodder)
at £6.99
Rap singer Lord Tribulation is about to make the big time: he’s on the brink of a new recording deal and tipped to retain his title in the slamdown for The Writer in Residence for Ladbroke Grove. Then his life is rocked to the core. A teenager listens to Lord Tribulation’s music as he fire-bombs a house, injuring people inside, and Lord Tribulation’s father, a veteran musician dies suddenly in an alley. An elaborate plot unfolds linking both incidents to 1976, a time when the far right was organising racist attacks, black people were hounded by the use of the ‘sus’ law, radical black groups were emerging in response and a riot erupted at the Notting Hill Carnival. The narrative leads to unpalatable truths and secrets and also works as a coming of age story for Lord Tribulation as he is forced to make hard choices and deal with his own short-comings. Steeped in music, and laden with musical references, and with its own play list appended, Killer Tune is a celebration of a culture and a community rarely found in crime fiction. This is the second novel from Say Mitchell who won the CWA’s John Creasey Best First Novel Award with Running Hot.
(
Cath Staincliffe
author of the popular Sal Kilkenny mysteries and the series creator of TV Blue Murder)
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