True Blue

New Year's Eve 1988. An illegal rave in Hackney. Acid House has arrived in the UK. But the Second Summer of Love is no golden era for Britain.
A decade of Thatcher is starting to bite and her planned "Community Charge" will only rub salt in the wounds. Privatisation has lined shareholders pockets, but at what cost? A nation stripped of its assets, going for broke.
DC Patrick Noble is assigned to a task force working out of Stoke Newington, gathering evidence of police corruption to use against his new colleagues. But this is a dangerous game. And his underlings - spycop Parker and reluctant civilian Suzie Scialfa - are getting restive. Turns out blackmail and intimidation can only get you so far. Meanwhile, council solicitor Jon Davies is once again lifting stones that shouldn't be lifted - this time plumbing the depths of the deal to privatise water.
As the country hurtles towards disorder, in the form of riots that even the Iron Lady can't withstand, Noble walks an inexorable path towards his own inescapable fate. Things can only get better. But first they have to hit rock bottom.
REVIEWS FOR WHITE RIOT, A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
'Rpresents everything that is good and important about the crime fiction genre' Irish Times
'Enthralling' Sunday Times
'Gripping' The Times
'Propulsive' Guardian

JOE THOMAS was born in Hackney in 1977. He is the author of the critically acclaimed São Paulo quartet - Paradise City, Gringa, Playboy, and Brazilian Psycho - and Bent, which was a Guardian Best Book of 2020 and an Irish Times pick of the best crime fiction of 2020. His new novel, White Riot, the start of a trilogy set in Hackney in the 1970s and 1980s, is to be published by Arcadia in January 2023, and will be followed by Red Menace and True Blue. Joe lives in London with his partner and son, and teaches at City, University of London.