cover image The Riot

The Riot

Laura Wilson. Felony & Mayhem, $14.95 trade paper (384p) ISBN 978-1-63194-102-3

Wilson’s somewhat convoluted fifth mystery featuring Det. Insp. Ted Stratton (after 2015’s A Willing Victim) takes Stratton in 1958 to Notting Hill, an area of London much more rough-and-tumble than his last assignment. When a rent collector is murdered, the higher-ups want to deny that the killing was racially motivated, but another murder soon makes it impossible to ignore that the racial tensions between working-class white people and Caribbean immigrants are finally boiling over. While Stratton investigates the murders and tries to determine whether there’s a connection, a race riot breaks out in the neighborhood, and yet another murder is uncovered. Stratton must sift through the complicated world of building societies (financial institutions owned by its members that offer banking and related financial services), as well as the motivations of a social-climbing landlord and a cast of pimps, prostitutes, and do-gooder socialites, to get to the truth. Wilson introduces too many characters and names too quickly, making the threads of the intersecting cases difficult to follow, but she illuminates the period beautifully with her details of the historically based events. (Nov.)