Crimewave 13: Bad Light
(TTA Press, £12)

THE dozen pieces in Crimewave 13 explore a broadly common theme — the utter blurring of the traditional boundaries between the criminal and the victim, with the trajectories and locations of each of the stories quite distinct from each other and the clever use of partial perspectives confounding the reader throughout.

Morning Star reviewer Mat Coward gives a criminal’s view of the inherent contradictions within capitalism as identified by Karl Marx’s hypothesis of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in a story in which, alternatively menacing and cartoonish, local tough guy Top and his diminished band of hangers-on journey through an economically squeezed town to discover why their customer base no longer has the readies to pay for their product.

Through interrogating local businesspeople and economic experts they quickly discover the hard way that the contraction of credit lines has criminal implications for them as well as their business.