Girl on Fire, by Tony Parsons
It doesn’t take them long: Max is part of a team specially chosen to
raid the house of Pakistani immigrants – on the surface law-abiding citizens,
but the sons of the family have recently returned from Syria where they were
apparently fighting Jihad. Why weren’t
they under surveillance? Max asks, for the raid turns bad, with one police
officer murdered by one of the sons, and both brothers killed ‘in self-defence’
according to the official police statement.
Race relations in London have hit rock-bottom, and gangs have started to
form outside the raided house, those in support of ‘Jihad!’ and far right
extremists determined to shout them down.
Max’s personal life decides to contribute to the
powder-keg situation in the shape of his ex-wife: it’s time for Scout to have some stability
and order in her life. She should come
and live with her mother and mum’s new family, and to that end – for she knows
that Max will not consent – she has retained legal advice, so there! It goes without saying that Max’s lot is not
a happy one, but hey! He’s the hero,
he’s supposed to solve all these problems with a careless grin and minimum
effort, but when his beloved dog Stan becomes deathly ill too, he’s pretty much
ready to throw in the towel.
As always, (see review below) Mr Parsons evokes perfectly
the fearful atmosphere of a huge city under threat; his minor characters are portrayed with
fairness and honesty, especially the raiding officers and what the job does to
them – but he is equally stark in presenting the distorted view of Islam that
murdering fanatics embrace, and the effect it has on their families. Sadly, where this book falls just a little
despite the author’s obvious competence is that it fails to engage the reader
for the whole length of the story, even though there was an unexpected and
shocking twist to the tale right at the end.
What a shame. FOUR STARS.
The Hanging Club, by Tony Parsons
How satisfying, how enjoyable it is to be hooked by a
story on the very first page – it doesn’t happen very often, especially with
crime writers who follow a by-the-numbers formula, but Tony Parson’s
swashbuckling superhero DC Max Wolfe, despite his superior and unerring powers
of deduction has a human side which makes him much more credible: his personal life in each book so far (this
is the third) is less than ideal, except for his love for his little daughter
Scout, and their dog Stan. Max has been
a solo Dad for several years now, and while he wishes, as everyone does, for
True Love (he has fallen for a different girl in each story – unsuccessfully!)
he still blesses life with his little family.
Not
everyone is so lucky, especially the victims of the latest mindless violence he
has to deal with every day: a decent man
remonstrates with louts who are urinating on his wife’s car parked outside
their home. The louts beat him to death,
film it on their phones, then get the charges reduced to manslaughter in court
– ‘he was freatening us, me Lord! It was self-defence!’ – despite the iphone
evidence, their sentences are a slap on the wrist, leaving yet another family
permanently in ruins. Max feels a
burning hatred for the smirking murderers in the dock, especially when they laugh
at him, the arresting officer, on their way to prison. Sometimes – many times, the Law is an Ass.
And
another group thinks so, too – a masked group who post online their execution
by hanging of taxi driver Mahmud Irani in a place so secret that no police at
West End Central, Max’s base, has any idea where it could be – except that
Mahmud’s body is dumped at the site of the old Tyburn Tree, London’s infamous
place of Execution. The video states
that he was found guilty of grooming, drugging and abusing children, but the
sentence he served (two years) was absurd:
death by hanging was the proper verdict.
This
killing is followed up by another ‘execution’, in the same secret place of a
trust fund manager who drove his Porsche over a child biking across a zebra
crossing, sending the little boy into a coma for six months before he was taken
off life-support, but Money-Man was sent down for two years only – another ‘wet
bus ticket’ slap – and he was even reinstated in his job when he was released.
Once
again, his death is posted online for all to see, and the internet is buzzing
with support for the vigilantes who are doing what should have been done to
those murdering bastards in the first place:
Bring Back Capital Punishment!
And
those weak-kneed coppers who tiptoe around guarding the prisoners’ rights –
they’re worse than the lot of them. As
Max finds to his horror when he puts two and two together and finds himself in
the same secret place, awaiting his execution.
Mr Parsons keeps the
action barrelling along at Porsche speed, at the same time giving readers a
marvellous picture of another country within Britain: London, that great and sprawling city, from
the teeming centres of Smithfield and Soho to the elegant leafy avenues and
squares of those rich enough to live there – and a compelling portrait of
London’s underbelly, a place that no-one wants to explore. FIVE STARS
