Reviewed by Rod McLary
The genre of crime fiction is a very broad church – from the genteel novels of Agatha Christie to the elegant prose of P D James to Ian Rankin’s gritty streets of Edinburgh, let alone the Australian crime novels imbedded in the Australian landscape. But here is a new crime novel – one reflecting the harsh reality of police work on the streets of Sheffield in England. The flavour of this novel is succinctly captured in the description of the police briefing room which is like an unplugged fridge, smelling of mould and out-of-date meat with an underlayer of stale police fart [29]. Readers will know immediately that this is no ‘body in the library’ crime story but one that pulls no punches.
The central character of The Day of the Roaring is Detective Inspector Diana Walker who leads the investigation into the deaths of four people. But there are two additional stories being narrated in the first person which lie alongside the primary one. The first is told by Bruno an eighteen-year-old African, and the second by Njambi or MaMa [Diana’s Kenyan grandmother]. Bruno’s narrative chronicles the ongoing challenges he faces as he attempts create a reasonable life for himself and to resist the pull towards drugs and violence. Njambi’s story is largely rooted in the past and is one of unspeakable horror as she revisits her childhood in Kenya during the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion as she in the present-day participates in a class action for financial compensation for the atrocities perpetrated by the British army forces.
To further add to the complexity of the narrative are the backstories of police corruption and allegations of financial fraud related to the closure of the local secondary school – the latter issue resulting in the discovery of the headmaster’s disembodied head in an abandoned filing cabinet. The premature closure of the school also affected the futures of its students – including Bruno now in a dead-end job with no prospects.
As the narrative is set within the African community, one of the matters that DI Walker is dealing with is FGM [or female genital mutilation] a very serious cultural and medical issue for thousands of girls and young women from [in this novel] the African diaspora. There is a ‘cutter’ in the community and DI Walker is determined to locate and charge her.
The number of plotlines could in lesser hands result in a confused and uncertain narrative. But here, they are skilfully managed and balanced so what is crafted is a tense and thrilling debut novel. It is not just a police procedural story but a novel which contains a depth of characterisation and sufficient backstory for the reader to be fully engaged with the characters and the eventual outcome of DI Walker’s investigations.
The Day of the Roaring concludes with a number of media reports which set out the results of the investigations and brings the novel to a satisfactory conclusion.
It is indeed a fine novel within its genre and the author has introduced a new protagonist who will, one hopes, be the subject of further stories.
The Day of the Roaring
[2025]
by Nina Bhadreshwar
Hemlock Press GB
ISBN 978 0 00 864569 4
$32.99; 385pp