The Doll Princess
Tom Benn
The Doll Princess
It's Manchester, July 1996, the month after the IRA bomb, and the Evening News is carrying reports of two murders. On the front page there's a photograph of a glamorous Egyptian woman, a socialite and heiress to an oil fortune, whose partially clothed body has been found in the basement of a block of flats. It would appear that she has been the subject of a sexual attack. In the back pages of the same paper there is a fifty-word piece on the murder of a young prostitute whose body has been found dumped on a roadside near the McVitie's Factory. For Bane - fixer, loanshark and legman for one of Manchester's established ganglords - it's the second piece of news that hits hardest. Determined to find out what happened to his childhood sweetheart, he searches through the tribes and estates of his bombed city for answers. It soon becomes clear that the two newspaper stories belong on the same page, and that Bane's world belongs to others - those willing to profit from gun arsenals, human trafficking and a Manchester in decay.
2.8 out of 5 based on 3 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction |
| Format |
Hardcover |
| Pages |
304 |
| RRP |
£12.99 |
| Date of Publication |
January 2012 |
| ISBN |
978-0224093507 |
| Publisher |
Jonathan Cape |
| |
It's Manchester, July 1996, the month after the IRA bomb, and the Evening News is carrying reports of two murders. On the front page there's a photograph of a glamorous Egyptian woman, a socialite and heiress to an oil fortune, whose partially clothed body has been found in the basement of a block of flats. It would appear that she has been the subject of a sexual attack. In the back pages of the same paper there is a fifty-word piece on the murder of a young prostitute whose body has been found dumped on a roadside near the McVitie's Factory. For Bane - fixer, loanshark and legman for one of Manchester's established ganglords - it's the second piece of news that hits hardest. Determined to find out what happened to his childhood sweetheart, he searches through the tribes and estates of his bombed city for answers. It soon becomes clear that the two newspaper stories belong on the same page, and that Bane's world belongs to others - those willing to profit from gun arsenals, human trafficking and a Manchester in decay.
Reviews
The Independent
Rebecca Armstrong
"Another element that stands out in this madly bloody but sometimes brilliant book is how the characters speak. Accents are notoriously tricky on the page, but Benn captures the south Manchester patter impressively. True, some of the punctuation, or lack of it, is disconcerting, but Bane and pals aren't the type to wait around for apostrophes to catch up with their rapid-fire chat."
25/01/2012
Read Full Review
The Guardian
Laura Wilson
"A graduate of the UEA creative writing course, Benn is a sharply observant writer with a great eye for detail, but what really makes this book a cut above the average gangland thriller is the character of Bane himself."
30/12/2011
Read Full Review
The Sunday Times
Joan Smith
"Neither woman is remotely credible and it is narrated by Bane, a thug with a conscience, in a tiresome Manchester dialect. Violent and cartoonish, the novel is the literary equivalent of being stuck in an early Guy Ritchie film."
15/01/2012
Read Full Review