Recent crime fiction | 7 April 2016

All it takes is a spark. In her compelling new thriller, Ten Days (Canongate, £14.99), Gillian Slovo tracks the progress of a riot as it spreads across a rundown London estate. When Ruben, a black man of fragile nature, is accidentally killed in a police action, his friends and neighbours gather to protest his needless death. This peaceful demonstration ignites into violence and looting. Resident Cathy Mason and her family are caught up in the dangers of that night and the ones that follow.

Slovo takes the London riots of 2011 as her blueprint, but she moves beyond that, focusing not only on the local people but also on the new Commissioner of Police and the Home Secretary, both of whom are using the riots for their own political ends. Rather brilliantly, she increases the tension further by making one of the rioters an undercover detective, a man totally lost in the guise he has taken on.