The Riot
DI Stratton 5
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
1958: Notting Hill is sweltering in a heatwave. It's DI Stratton's new manor and a powder keg of racial tension. A rent collector is stabbed and a series of street fights between teddy boys and Caribbean immigrants sparks further unrest.
Young runaway Irene, on the verge of prostitution, finds her loyalties lie on both sides of the fight. A race riot breaks out - the worst Britain has ever seen.
Stratton must tread a path through the violence and prejudice to find the killer and save Irene before Notting Hill explodes.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wilson's somewhat convoluted fifth mystery featuring Det. Insp. Ted Stratton (after 2015's A Willing Victim) takes Stratton in 1958 to Notting Hill, an area of London much more rough-and-tumble than his last assignment. When a rent collector is murdered, the higher-ups want to deny that the killing was racially motivated, but another murder soon makes it impossible to ignore that the racial tensions between working-class white people and Caribbean immigrants are finally boiling over. While Stratton investigates the murders and tries to determine whether there's a connection, a race riot breaks out in the neighborhood, and yet another murder is uncovered. Stratton must sift through the complicated world of building societies (financial institutions owned by its members that offer banking and related financial services), as well as the motivations of a social-climbing landlord and a cast of pimps, prostitutes, and do-gooder socialites, to get to the truth. Wilson introduces too many characters and names too quickly, making the threads of the intersecting cases difficult to follow, but she illuminates the period beautifully with her details of the historically based events.
