Acid Row

Back on form with a vengeance, this is another taut thriller from English crime queen, Minette Walters. A chance remark made in Acid Row, a run down council estate, is the nemesis for scenes of horrific violence as a peaceful protest march spirals out of control into full-scale war. GP Sophie Morrison is trapped inside a known paedophile's house with two men. Held hostage by one of them, she attempts to get word to the outside of her plight unknowing of the fact that the police are unable to assist due to all entrances to the estate being blocked by overturned and burning cars. Jimmy James, freshly released from prison, tries to avoid the trouble but is slowly but irrevocably drawn into it against his will. Melanie and her mother Gaynor, instigators of the protest, gradually come to terms with the terror of what they appear to have unleashed and DCI Tyler struggles to find answers to the missing girl's disappearance at the same time as trying to control events from outside the borders of the estate. Based on the scenes in Portsmouth during the hunt for Sarah Payne, Walters highlights the ignorance of those who opt to drop out of education and exist on a life of drugs and crime. Page-turningly tense throughout, she skips between the search for a missing ten year old girl and the scenes gradually unfolding in the fortress-like estate. From the views of those involved in the peaceful protest to those suffering at the hands of the rebel insurgents, the pace never lets up till the final, murderous ending. - Lucy Watson

(Whitaker)

Minette Walters has taken the crime fiction world by storm since her first novel was published in 1992. She lives with her husband and two children in Dorchester.

(Whitaker)