Paul Southern: The Craze

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Set in Manchester's dark corners, The Craze is slick, sharp, perfectly pitched new crime writing. Southern's Manchester is the city where "you're only a road away from being mugged, a house away from being burgled, a pavement away from the next stolen car". It's also a city which has had a face-lift - "The chic eateries and upwardly mobile-phone bars vie for public space" - but it's all cosmetic. "Thinly applied make-up for a city on the mortuary slab." Beneath the slab is chaos and the Craze: crack and trash and gangs. There is Jamie whose dad is locked up; Shazia, whose dad would like her locked up in an arranged marriage. And Dru, the gay cabaret artist, who is always looking for the big break and for whom only worse breaks will follow. The characters' lives don't so much connect as collide in this powerfully evocative book about the inside of a big, bad, colourful city.

* Century, $34.95