Red Menace

An Irish Times best book of 2024 so far

"A very early candidate for the crime novel of the year" IRISH TIMES

Live Aid, July 1985. The great and the good of the music scene converge to save the world. But the TV glitz cannot disguise ugly truths about Thatcher's Britain.

Jon Davies and Suzi Scialfa have moved on since the inquest into the death of Colin Roach, but they're about to be drawn back into the struggle - Jon by his restless curiosity and Suzi by the reappearance of DC Patrick Noble.

Noble's other asset, the salaried spycop Parker, is a pawn in a game he only dimly comprehends. First, he's ordered to infiltrate the Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham; next will come Wapping, ground zero of a plot to smash the print unions. But who is Noble working for, and how far can he be trusted?

The Iron Lady is reforging the nation, and London with it. Right to Buy may secure her votes, but who really stands to benefit? Corruption is endemic and the gap between rich and poor grows wider by the day. Insurrection seems imminent - all that's needed is a spark.

REVIEWS FOR WHITE RIOT, A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Rpresents everything that is good and important about the crime fiction genre' Irish Times

'Enthralling' Sunday Times

'Gripping' The Times

'Propulsive' Guardian

A blistering exposé of the reality beneath the shiny surface of the 1980s . . . Toss in some crack cocaine and realpolitik of breathtaking cynicism at the highest levels of British government, all of it told in a style leavened with gallows humour of the blackest variety, and you have a very early candidate for the crime novel of the year -- Irish Times
The second chapter in Thomas's epic trilogy of policing and corruption in 1980s East London . . . Juggling storylines like a box-set drama rather than a conventional thriller, Thomas builds up an absorbing portrait of a time when everything was in the balance -- John Williams Mail on Sunday
With Red Menace, Joe Thomas's United Kingdom Trilogy is building into one of the crucial texts of contemporary British fiction. Unshakably authentic, a faithful tracing of the fault lines of power and corruption, and the characters whose lives are upended when society shears beneath them. The writing is a marvel of sustained mood. A novel that expands our horizons of crime writing -- Dominic Nolan

JOE THOMAS was born in Hackney in 1977. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Sao Paulo quartet - Paradise City, Gringa, Playboy, and Brazilian Psycho - and Bent, which was a Guardian Best Book of 2020 and an Irish Times pick of the best crime fiction of 2020. His new novel, White Riot, the start of a trilogy set in Hackney in the 1970s and 1980s, is to be published by Arcadia in January 2023, and will be followed by Red Menace and True Blue. Joe lives in London with his partner and son, and teaches at City, University of London.

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