Chequered Justice: Very occasionally a book comes along that is hard to put down, and this is one of those. It’s really a true story masquerading as a fiction, and that’s what gives it its raw emotional power: it seems these very shocking events really happened to the author. The story isn’t shocking because it’s violent – as too many thrillers often are – but because emotional impact of the Kafkaesque web of injustice in which the narrator and his family are trapped. If all this is true – as it appears to be – it’s very scarey, much more so than if it was just imagined. The story is compulsive for the simple, obvious reason you really want to know what happened next, and how these bad things can be put right, if they ever can. I spent the whole day reading it for just that reason. (I also know a lot more about motor racing now than I did before!)
John Bartlett 