Backlash by Rod Duncan

I don’t often do book reviews, but I really want to recommend this one. I picked up the “sequel” in New Zealand a couple of years ago and loved it, so I was pleasantly surprised to find this in a bookshop in Bali.

Backlash is Rod Duncan‘s first novel and it’s part of a very loosely connected trilogy set in Leicester. The location is really the only thing that connects them so they can be read in any order.

It’s a crime novel set against a backdrop of racial tension with a healthy dose of corruption and personal drama thrown in. The pace is tight, it’s very easy to read and the plot wraps up well at the end.

I’m even impressed by the computery bits – somewhere so many authors fall down. It’s always uncomfortable when a novel (or film) includes details of a subject you know well, and you spend time cursing the author’s over-simplification of just plain inaccuracy. Duncan hasn’t made this mistake and the IT side of it gets my tick of approval.

The other reason I’m writing this review is simply that Duncan seems like a great guy. He’s not a massive author with a million sales of every book (yet!) but this means that he seems to answer every email and blog comment personally. He’s enthusiastic about his choice of career and in helping anyone else follow in his footsteps.

Oh, he’s also dyslexic. Which I suppose makes writing a whole novel that bit more of a challenge for him than for a non-sufferer.

I have to say I did prefer Breakbeat, the next novel in the series, but I assume this just means that every successive book will just be better than the last.

Now I just need to keep my eyes open for his other stuff.