Jumping on the child abuse bandwagon? Minette Walters – Acid Row

Oh my goodness, this book is depressing. Paedophiles, drug addicts, poverty on a rundown English housing estate.  When a young girl disappears a riot is  triggered on an estate where a known paedophile lives. Walters refers in the novel to the  News of the World’s 2000 Megan’s Law campaign during which they published  paedophiles’ addresses which led to vigilante attacks and even a pediatrician being attacked, so it seems as if she was  obviously jumping on a bandwagon of the time. I got a bit sucked into the story but the deaths were just so horrible that I wouldn’t read this again.

This book has been criticised as not really showing a realistic view of the working classes and it just reflecting clichés by a middle class writer.  There are admittedly quite a few stereotypes here – the unmarried mother, the black ex-criminal, the misunderstood child abuser, etc.  An interesting novel but I would recommend reading some of her other novels first.

Minette Walters – The Breaker

More crime reading for me.  Kate Sumner’s  body is washed up on a deserted beach in Dorset and  her traumatized three-year-old daughter is discovered twenty miles away walking the streets of Poole.

There are no shortage of suspects including the particularly strange sex obsessed Steve and Kate’s loner husband whose alibi looks a bit dodgy.  As the investigation continues Kate emerges as a woman with a complicated past.

This is an enjoyable whodunnit but there seem to be the usual comments on women asking to be raped judging by what they are wearing, and I found it hard to tell if this was the author’s view or just that of the characters.  I loved the Dorset setting and it keeps you reading though, so a great one for next to the pool.