Runaway Town ups the stakes

Runaway Town is the second novel from Jay Stringer, whom I’ve previously had the pleasure of interviewing. It’s the follow-up to his blistering debut Old Gold and continues the adventures of part-Romani ex-cop gangland detective Eoin Miller. Runaway Town sees Eoin drawn even deeper into the dealings of the Gaines family, a organised crime family operating in the industrial wasteland of Wolverhampton, in the UK’s West Midlands.

Eoin is asked to investigate a series of rapes on teenage immigrant girls and, knowing how little help an outsider can expect from the legitimate authorities, he can’t help but get drawn deeper and deeper into the case. The more he looks the deeper he becomes embroiled in a world of corruption, racism and revenge including being forced to face some uncomfortable truths about his own family’s past.

This second installment in a planned trilogy ups the stakes considerably from Stringer’s impressive debut. The writing is more confident and assured and there is a righteous political anger beating at the heart of this excellent novel.

Stringer is developing into one of the most exciting new British novelists out there and his brand of social pulp fiction stirs the brain as well as the heart. A very exciting and very British strain of noir crime fiction has been steadily growing over the last few years and Jay Stringer is one of its finest proponents. I cannot wait to see where the final installment in Eoin Miller’s story takes us.

Runaway Town is available in all the usual places.

You can find out more about Jay Stringer here and or send him a tweet.

Words by Neil Martin.