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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunning story of mayhem and murder in council housing, 31 Jan 2002
Minette Walters gets better and better! In the tradition of Ruth Rendell, but with far more likable characters, Walters puts a unique stamp on her mysteries. Tough, compassionate Sophie Morrison, a young NHS doctor assigned to a housing estate popularly known as Acid Row, is trapped inside a house with a convicted paedophile and his monstrous, abusive father while a crowd flinging Molotov cocktails mills around loose outside, working themselves up to break in. A rumor about paedophiles moving into the neighborhood started by a disgruntled, misanthropic health visitor named Fay Baldwin has set off a chain reaction that will lead to several deaths and severe injuries to many others. Walters' technique is to tell the story in overlapping chapters, the riot set against the abduction of a ten-year-old girl named Amy Biddulph. Amy was seen on the estate, the rumor says, but was she, really? Is what happened to Amy totally separate from what is happening on the streets of Acid Row? Is she at the mercy of more sophisticated paedophiles---possibly her father and his best friend---who sell pornography on the Internet? Walters' use of this technique moves the story along at a fast pace, with the immediacy of events forwarded in police and other bulletins adding urgency to the action. She creates wonderful characters who remain with the reader long after the book is put away; these are no cardboard, 1-dimensional figures. Jimmy James, a small-time thief and would-be drug dealer, is the unlikliest of heroes, but, together with the old, enfeebled, arthritic, often senile dears of the calling network set up by Dr. Morrison, he's able to do what the police cannot---try to find her before she's raped or killed by the paedophile father-son family---and try to stop the dope-crazed teenager leading the pack of lager louts who want to kill the paedophiles...and anyone who get in their way, including Jimmy's endearing but volatile lady, whose impulsiveness and concern for her children was the catalyst for the riot. This is exciting storytelling, very visual, and calls out to be put on the big screen. Walters last, The Shape of Snakes, was a wonderful, heartfelt book, but Acid Row is even better.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scaringly close to home... ( warlockb@hotmail.com), 12 Nov 2004
Acid Row is a brilliant description of contemporary suburbia! The characters could be found anywhere in Europe, unemployed, unwanted and stuffed away in ramshackle houses, that should have been demolished long ago. The pulse of the neighbourhood is so high, that the tiniest spark could set everything afire.. Then rumours of a peadophile, under false name, in their midst.. A WPC vanishes, a social servivice nurse is taking hostage and ramparts built around the complex, some of the men making fire bombs. In the middle, a reformed criminal,his always pregnant girl friend , his sister and mother against a raving mob, long since past reason. Tragedy unfolds,an innocent man gets mistaken for the child molestor, who himself turns out to be a mere shadow of the much bigger evil in his house.. The book is terrifying and makes you think how easy one thing can lead to another and how vulnerable our civilized society really is. It is so real that it makes you wonder if it has indeed happened somewhere, or, sadly: When it it WILL happen somewhere. Brilliant!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Provocative writing, 6 Sep 2004
I have just completed Acid Row. It is one of Minette Walter's best novels - so challenging to read. She captures the emotions her characters experience so well. For me a recurring theme was the way individual actions and minor decisions have profound repercussions on people and the wider community. As an author she has the ability to transport you to the scene of the action -you are spell-bound, horrified and repulsed, by what is happening - but an impotent bystander. The book has a gentle humour too - and the humanity of the key characters shines through.
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