It began as a peaceful protest, when local mothers organized a march against a registered pedophile who had been resettled there. But when a child is reported missing, the protest march is hijacked by local teens who set up barricades to keep out the police. As Molotov cocktails begin to fly and angry lynch mobs roam the neighborhood, 19-year-old Mel, six months pregnant and desperate to protect her two young children, struggles to hold a thin line of friends and neighbors against the raging mob, and her boyfriend, two days out of jail and the police's only hope for rescuing a hostage, stands against a tide of angry people who've decided they have nothing left to lose. Minette Walters has a gift for creating complex characters whose actions and motivations are totally believable, even as they are caught up in situations of harrowing tension. She weaves together strands of several stories in Acid Row, drawing readers into this darkly compelling world to discover who will live, who will die, and who has the missing child?. Sue Stone From the Publisher Acid Row is a crime-infested housing project that exists by its own laws. When news comes that a child has been kidnapped, the frustration and anger that has been seething on the streets of Acid Row is ignited. And no one will be safe. New York Daily News ..a compelling weave of chilling plot lines. Denver Post ..a page-turner that challenges readers with out-of-sequence plot developments and expertly developed characters.. State It's a gripping story .. one superbly written novel. Entertainment Weekly Edgar-winning suspense novelist Walters has written a zippy summer read with this tightly plotted, character-rich thriller. I Love A Mystery.com Walters has a refined sociological and psychological imagination. Publishers Weekly HEver 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 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.

 Penguin Group (USA) 0399148620 / 9780399148620
Hardcover As New Condition New York 

Price: 17.15 USD