Acid Row - Hardcover

Walters, Minette

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399148620 ISBN 13: 9780399148620

Publisher: Putnam Adult, 2002

Synopsis

Visiting a crime-riddled, decaying housing project, unaware that a known pedophile lives there, doctor Sophie Morrison learns that a child has gone missing and that the project's bloodthirsty vigilantes are out in force, trapping Sophie with a man who is intent on hurting her. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Minette Walters is the author of seven previous novels. Her work has been translated into thirty-two languages and has been adapted for television.

From Publishers Weekly:

Ever since she won an Edgar back in 1993, Walters has continually worked outside the standard boundaries of crime drama. Psychological suspense may be the best tagline for her novels, but it still doesn't quite catch her tenor. Her heroes, for example, are anything but moody, disagreeable. Her dialogue wanders and stews and then jabs like a bayonet. Her plots often evolve out of sequence. She simply won't walk the line and she's confoundingly good at taking liberties. Here, Walters transports readers to Acid Row, a dungeon of a housing project in a London suburb populated by single mothers, fatherless children, criminals fresh from prison, gangs and the helpless elderly. It's a community, however, bonded in its destitution, suspicious and unwelcoming of outsiders. When word leaks out that the government has placed a pedophile in No. 23, the beleaguered residents begin to simmer. Then, when a 10-year-old girl goes missing, Acid Row explodes into open revolt. With frightening clarity, Walters breaks down the daylong riot into recurring vignettes. There's the anguish of Sophie Morrison, a young doctor taken hostage by the pedophile and his vicious father; swaggering ex-con Jimmy James, who rises to the occasion with bursts of reluctant heroism; the cowering police and their pathetic attempts at restoring order; and the evasive parents of Amy Biddulph, the little girl nobody can find. Walters (The Shape of Snakes; Edgar-winning The Sculptress) pulls it all off with rhythmic brilliance, the narrative flowing smoothly. Again, she demonstrates her eye for the sociological and psychological avalanche provoked by human temptation and people living in cramped quarters. With her eighth novel, Walters continues to navigate literary pathways few have ventured down before her.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0399148620
• ISBN 13: 9780399148620
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384