PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
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.
Stylish and pacy, White Riot throbs with a restless, punky energy, bringing Hackney of the late 70s and early 80s compellingly and disturbingly to life. A full-throated, swaggering roar of a book White Riot is an electrifying novel of politics, the counterculture, and music as a powerful force. In Suzi Scialfa, Thomas has given us a pioneering character - a female journalist, forging her way in a man's world; you believe in her, root for her, want to hear more. I loved this book -- Laura Barton Police and thieves, punks and spycops. White Riot captures the raw energy of the times in spectacular fashion, evoking a visceral narrative of power and corruption -- Jake Arnott Joe Thomas takes on the inflammable end of the Seventies, when Rock Against Racism took the National Front head on and Margaret Thatcher turned the Winter of Discontent into her own Springtime . . . Like Daniel Rachel's Walls Come Tumbling Down meets David Peace's GB84 in a dark labyrinth of bent coppers, sleeping policemen, political polarity and the greatest sounds of the dirtiest decade -- Cathi Unsworth This book does not mess about. Punchy pithy prose page to page. Thrilling, entertaining, expertly crafted - a winner in every way. Loved it -- Ashley Hickson-Lovence
