MAYER WAKEFIELD speaks to Urielle Klein-Mekongo about activism, musical inspiration and the black British experience
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Crime fiction with Mat Coward: April 1, 2025
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
KEVIN BRYAN reviews new releases by The Outlaws, Mark Radcliffe & David Boardman, Clarence White
BOB NEWLAND reviews a book that will take many back to the final years of apartheid in South Africa
GAVIN O’TOOLE examines the fatal relationship between environmental crimes and politics in Brazil and the inspiration provided by Indigenous people
MARIA DUARTE and LEO BOIX review Little Trouble Girls, Big Boys, The Roses, and Caught Stealing
MARY CONWAY admires a study of environmental idealism that aspires to Chekhov but is arrested in a deluge of middle-class opinion
NOT recommended for the squeamish, the easily shocked or the easily offended, if you think you’ve got the stomach for it Christa Faust’s The Get Off (Hard Case, £9.99) is top-quality modern pulp fiction.
The protagonist, former porn star Angel Dare, has appeared in two previous novels, knowledge of which is not necessary to enjoy this one. In her third and final outing, Angel’s on the run from the law, and from a social media posse, following a revenge killing that went as wrong as it possibly could.
She gets entangled with cattle barons and rodeo stars as she makes her way across the USA towards sanctuary in the wildlands near the Canadian border. And although she doesn't mean to do it, everywhere she goes she leaves dead bodies behind her. The advanced pregnancy doesn't exactly help, either. Can someone like Angel really choose to “get off,” and start a new life?
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