Product Description

Acid Row. The name the beleaguered inhabitants give to the place they live. A no-man's-land of single mothers and fatherless children where angry, alienated teenagers control the streets.

Into this battleground comes Sophie Morrison, a young doctor visiting a patient in Acid Row. Little does she know that she is entering the home of a known paedophile. And with reports circulating that a tormented child called Amy has disappeared, the vigilantes are out in force . . .

Soon Sophie is trapped at the centre of a terrifying siege, with a man she has come to despise.

Whipped to a frenzy by unsubstantiated rumour, the mob unleashes its hatred. Against authority, the law - and the `pervert'. `Protecting Amy' becomes the catch-all defence for the terrible events that follow. And if the murder is part of it, then so be it ...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #74782 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-09
• Binding: Paperback
• 475 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
From the first page, Minette Walters assaults your sensibilities with her psychological thriller Acid Row; she grabs you hard and fast, sustains the onslaught throughout and hits you with a knock-out final blow. Straightaway she informs you that the abduction of 10-year-old Amy and the revelation that a paedophile has been relocated to Acid Row, "a place of deprivation where literacy was poor, drugs endemic and fights commonplace", and where children were left to run wild, leads to rioting and "five hours of savagery leaves three dead".

Even with this prior knowledge, Walters' skill as a novelist never leaves you complacent and nothing prepares you for the horror and tragedy of her novel's shocking denouement. Monsters and heroes are found in the most unlikely places, subverting all your preconceptions: third-time pregnant teenager Melanie incites the protest only to block the rioters when they turn violent; "Big, black" Jimmy James is just out of prison but risks his neck to save the life of an injured policewoman; and the 71-year-old asthmatic father of the so-called paedophile turns out to be more sadistic than your worst imaginings.

A page-turning novel doesn't have to be particularly well written or intelligent to hold you in its grip but occasionally one comes along with both qualities and leaves you reeling in its wake. This is it. Acid Row's numerous narratives are so tightly packed and interconnected that no detail is spurious and everything is channelled towards suspense and shattering revelations. Walters just goes from strength to strength. --Nicola Perry

Daily Telegraph
`A breathtaking achievement'

The Times
`Compelling . . . Walters masterfully weaves the disparate human stories into the action . . . a frightening, lethal cocktail of violence'

Customer Reviews

acid burned dry
Fortunately, I picked up this book from the hotel bookcase on a wet day, so it passed the time!

It's also the first Walters' book I've read. I will try another but not hold out much hope for a riveting read filled with sturdy characterisation and reliable reporting of a riot situation. The author mentions Bradford as though this justifies the reasoning behind her storyline. Hmmmm. I lived there when the riots were in full swing. Don't recognize much by way of a comparison with the real world. Anyway, the book passed a day. Don't expect much else!

A difficult read
Maybe the readers who gave this such low marks for unbelievable characters have never lived on a run down council estate or met such people as featured.

I couldn't put this down once I'd started. Yes its an uneasy subject to tackle, and maybe the character of the paedophile was wrong (I don't think I've ever met one), but I could certainly relate to the poor families with no hope and no future, the single mothers with lots of children by different fathers, the young unemployed, the health visitor with no children who thinks she knows best and the elderly who've seen their beloved neighbourhood go to the dogs.

This was only the 2nd Minette Walters I've read, so I can't really compare it to her other books, but it certainly wasn't boring.

Patronising & badly-researched!
This is the worst of her novels. The estate described in the book is something imagined from the worst excesses of many Daily Mail articles and bears no relation to reality whatsoever. It shows that the author has never actually lived in such a situation. I have and I am not an ill-educated, violent, foul-mouthed, alcoholic junkie as the inhabiants of Acid Row are described.

At one point someone refers to the police as "Rozzers" - a term which probably hasn't been used since the 1950's! The council estate stereotypes are ludicrously uncouth/violent/ignorant and are frankly laughable.

Compared the The Echo in which the author sensitively and heart-rendlingly explored the issues surrounding homelessness, Acid Row is simply an imaginary middle-class impression of life on a council estate with a few crimes thrown in for good measure. Awful. Avoid.