Red Hot Front by Harry Brett, Book Review

Don’t judge a book by its cover, but in this case you’d be alright – I like the cover and what’s inside too. It’s about a woman who was married to a gangster, a premise that took me back to my youth. I once was friendly with a woman who’d just divorced a Mafiosi. They remained on relatively friendly terms, for the sake of their children, no doubt, and when her birthday rolled around, he rang her. ‘I’ve got a birthday present for you …  but I’d like to show it to you in person…’ Turns out he’d bought his ex a cemetery plot with a gravestone in place, with a photo of her as a child on it.  All that was missing was the date of her death.  He showed her the view from the plot and how close it was to a water source so they could keep any flowers planted watered. She hadn’t planned on causing him any trouble, she had her kids to think of after all, but he wanted to be certain. And it worked.

The protagonist of Red Hot Front, gangster widow Tatiana Goodwin, has a lot to consider when she inherits her husband’s  criminal empire. She’s never been comfortable with her husband’s line of work and would rather be out than in. But life’s never that simple and she gradually gets sucked into a whirlpool of violence and danger, besides, you discover new talents when you need them, even if it means becoming matriarch to a criminal organisation. Now Zach, her son, has no trouble wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps. How can she keep her family safe and alive, when there are all sorts of enemies out there looking for easy pickings?

I’ve never been to Great Yarmouth, where this book is set, but my husband’s grandfather used to go there annually to fish and his grandmother followed the fleet down from Scotland to do filleting and salting or whatever the fishing quinies did. I can well imagine that crime grew as the fishing industry declined. Times have been hard on many East Coast sea ports and the climate is hardly like in Madeira.

In a genre that often follows fashion and many books published at the same time have a similar premise or theme, this one is refreshingly different. Well written, with believable characters and a gritty setting, I can recommend this series. Tatty is a character you will want to get to know.

Harry Brett is the pseudonym for Henry Sutton, the author of nine novels and senior lecturer of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.

This second in the Goodwin Series was first published May 2018 by Corsair in hardback (£18.99).