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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Shocking!, 22 Feb 2005
Yes, this book is indeed shocking. Such very bad dialogue! Such cardboard characters! Quite shocking. Here we have a novel which tries really hard to turn today's headline into a fast-paced insightful, gritty yet ultimately inspiring novel but drastically fails on every page. Minette Walters does not appear to have first hand experience of how the unrespectable working class actually talk, whether black or white, so she makes it up... Even The Bill is more convincing than that. It sounds more like an Ealing comedy. And there's page after page of it.
Where do you begin with Acid Row? Every scene we've seen before - the angry crowds, the hostage taken, the subtle police interrogation, the crisis which brings out the best and the worst in people...and every character is a cliché - the frail old woman who turns out to be feisty ("You've been a very bad influence on me, Jimmy. I'm swearing, I'm party to crimes, and I haven't felt so useful in years!"), the misunderstood paedophile, the low-life teenagers. But there's one character who isn't a cliché at all. You never came across anyone like him. It's that not so very reluctant hero Jimmy Jones, who seems to be modelled after Frank Bruno, very large, friendly in a deadpan sort of way, and willing to have a go at anything - running back into burning houses to rescue known sex offenders, carrying unconscious people across his shoulders, and all the time being sensitive to old folks and little kids. Frank Bruno crossed with Batman, and just as cartoonlike as both of them.
The "Two months later" chapter at the end puts the tin hat on the whole thing, where Jimmy and the feisty old lady have a good chuckle about their crazy wild adventure, just the way they used to in the last scene of any American TV show of the 60s and 70s. A few wry comments, a few lessons learned. Here's the lesson I learned : steer clear of Minette Walters!
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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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2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fantastic read, 13 Mar 2004
By A Customer
I have read other Minette Walters books and enjoyed them but this one was the most overwhelming one for me as the different emotions i felt whilst reading it, it was just amazing.
The characters are thoroughly believable.
If you want a good read buy this book you will not be disappointed!
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