Riot

“A crime narrative of great authority . . . extremely evocative” from the award-winning author of A Willing Victim (Financial Times).

This is the fifth volume in the award-winning Inspector Ted Stratton series, which opened during the London Blitz (with The Innocent Spy) and has now landed in the rainy summer of 1958. Detective Inspector Stratton is investigating the death of a rent collector—never a popular personage—in Notting Hill, a district seething with tensions between the new Caribbean immigrants and their white, working-class neighbors. Stratton has his suspicions, but a second body makes it clear: Race is at the heart of these murders. Like the rest of the series, The Riot is based on real events and characters, on which Wilson sheds new and revealing light. A compelling mystery and a fascinating dive into the London of the late 1950s, complete with cameo appearances by a few notorious celebrities.

Praise for the Inspector Stratton series

“Laura Wilson is an exceptional talent . . . A terrific police procedural, a mesmerizing historical novel—few writers working today can deliver this kind one-two punch.” —Laura Lippman, New York Times bestselling author

“Outstanding . . . Wilson convincingly evokes what it was like to sleep in a bomb shelter or stumble through shattered London streets in the dark. The characters are convincing, too.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Wilson is as adroit at the straightforward mechanics of the crime mystery as she is at evocative prose shot through with a keen sense of the past.” —Independent