Mystery fans and writers are always looking for new locations in which murder can take place. Attica Locke has an absolute beauty in her latest thriller, Pleasantville. The eponymous district in Houston, Texas, was created in the aftermath of the second world war: ‘a planned community of new homes, spacious and modern in design, and built specifically for negro families of means and class’. However, many of the same fears and frustrations that affect poor black people are also prevalent here; racism, prejudice, the sense of being trapped in a social ghetto. And when a teenage girl is found dead, the town splits along the old faultlines of class, political difference and simple human longing.
The story is set in 1996. Axel Hathorne stands a very good chance of becoming the first black mayor of Houston, until his nephew, Neal, is charged with the
teenager’s murder.
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