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White City
On sale
7th November 2024
Price: £20
‘I very much doubt I’ll read a better crime novel this year’ IAN RANKIN
‘Dominic Nolan is a wonderful writer’ CHRIS WHITAKER
‘Crime writing of the highest quality’ DAILY MAIL
It’s 1952, and London is victorious but broken, a city of war ruins and rationing, run by gangsters and black-market spivs.
An elaborate midnight heist, the biggest robbery in British history, sends newspapers into a frenzy. Politicians are furious, the police red-faced. They have suspicions but no leads. Hunches but no proof.
For two families, it is more than just a sensational headline, as their fathers fail to return home on the day of the robbery.
Young Addie Rowe, daughter of a missing Jamaican postman and drunk ex-club hostess mother, struggles to care for her little sister in a dilapidated Brixton rooming house.
Claire Martin, increasingly resentful of roads not taken, strives to make the rent and keep her teenage son Ray from falling under unsavoury influences in Notting Dale.
She finds herself caught between the interests of dangerous men who may know the truth behind her husband’s disappearance: Dave Lander, whose reserved nature she finds difficult to reconcile with his reputation as a violent gang enforcer, and Teddy ‘Mother’ Nunn, a sociopathic, evangelising outlaw and top lieutenant in Billy Hill’s underworld.
Drawn together through the years in the city’s invisible web of crime and poverty, the fates of the broken families and violent men collide in 1958, as the West Indian community of Notting Hill’s slums come under attack from thugs and Teddy Boys. For Addie, Claire, Dave and Mother, old scores will be settled and new dreams chased in the crucible of London’s violent summer.
Praise for Dominic Nolan:
‘Brings the obsessional dread of James Ellroy to 1940s London’ IAN RANKIN
‘Extraordinary…a career-defining performance’ THE SUNDAY TIMES, CRIME BOOKS OF THE YEAR
He writes like a dream – a dark, fevered, frenzied dream’ HARRIET TYCE
‘Deserves to be compared with the unforgettable James Ellroy’ DAILY MAIL
‘Savage, beautiful, mesmeric’ CHRIS WHITAKER
‘A stirringly ambitious novel…. Extraordinary’ A. J. FINN
‘Dominic Nolan is a wonderful writer’ CHRIS WHITAKER
‘Crime writing of the highest quality’ DAILY MAIL
It’s 1952, and London is victorious but broken, a city of war ruins and rationing, run by gangsters and black-market spivs.
An elaborate midnight heist, the biggest robbery in British history, sends newspapers into a frenzy. Politicians are furious, the police red-faced. They have suspicions but no leads. Hunches but no proof.
For two families, it is more than just a sensational headline, as their fathers fail to return home on the day of the robbery.
Young Addie Rowe, daughter of a missing Jamaican postman and drunk ex-club hostess mother, struggles to care for her little sister in a dilapidated Brixton rooming house.
Claire Martin, increasingly resentful of roads not taken, strives to make the rent and keep her teenage son Ray from falling under unsavoury influences in Notting Dale.
She finds herself caught between the interests of dangerous men who may know the truth behind her husband’s disappearance: Dave Lander, whose reserved nature she finds difficult to reconcile with his reputation as a violent gang enforcer, and Teddy ‘Mother’ Nunn, a sociopathic, evangelising outlaw and top lieutenant in Billy Hill’s underworld.
Drawn together through the years in the city’s invisible web of crime and poverty, the fates of the broken families and violent men collide in 1958, as the West Indian community of Notting Hill’s slums come under attack from thugs and Teddy Boys. For Addie, Claire, Dave and Mother, old scores will be settled and new dreams chased in the crucible of London’s violent summer.
Praise for Dominic Nolan:
‘Brings the obsessional dread of James Ellroy to 1940s London’ IAN RANKIN
‘Extraordinary…a career-defining performance’ THE SUNDAY TIMES, CRIME BOOKS OF THE YEAR
He writes like a dream – a dark, fevered, frenzied dream’ HARRIET TYCE
‘Deserves to be compared with the unforgettable James Ellroy’ DAILY MAIL
‘Savage, beautiful, mesmeric’ CHRIS WHITAKER
‘A stirringly ambitious novel…. Extraordinary’ A. J. FINN
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Reviews
Dom Nolan novels aren't just stories, but complete worlds. Immersive, epic, unforgettable. WHITE CITY is simply unmissable for anyone serious about (crime) fiction.
Dominic Nolan's 'Vine Street' was exceptional, but 'White City' goes above and beyond, a gripping story of curdled dreams and bad intentions set in a sharply-realised 1950s London. I very much doubt I'll read a better crime novel this year.
Yet again Nolan confirms his place as one of the UK's finest writers. White City is both fiercely ambitious and startlingly intimate, teeming with morally complex characters desperately trying to navigate a way through dark, treacherous waters. UK crime has waited a long time to find its James Ellroy; the wait is now officially over.
White City has it all: violent gangsters, a love story across the ages, riots, revenge. It will lift you high above the clouds, then dash you on the rocks. Nolan doesn't shy away from doing the unthinkable; no character is safe, not even the most beloved. Beautiful and brutal, this is a book to get lost in, to savour and enjoy, time and time again.
Transportive, compelling and completely all consuming, White City confirms Nolan as one of Britain's elite crime writers. Prose so expertly crafted, you can reach out and touch it, and characters so real they possess your soul. A gift of a novel.
WHITE CITY is quite simply a brilliant novel: broad in scope, deeply etched, so very sharp and stylish. The seamless blend of fact and fiction, the richly imagined lives of these heroic and monstrous characters, and the swagger and swing of the writing make for a masterpiece of social historical crime fiction.