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Still Point-bookcover

By: D.E. Toft

Still Point

Pages: 240 Ratings: 5.0
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It is the opening years of the 1990s. John Major is newly elected following the decade of austerity and social upheaval of the Thatcher years. High streets are boarded up and the residual tensions of the miners’ strikes, Wapping dispute and the poll tax are still evident across a country bitterly divided.

For Derek Brown, an officer in an undercover customs and excise team, his personal, professional and political life mirrors the disillusioned directionless drift of the left in the aftermath of three election defeats. However, a new case offers hope for Derek, with the prospect of settling old scores and giving him a new direction in his working life and political perspective – at the same time as a new relationship brings significant changes to his personal life. But as the case twists and turns, nothing goes as expected.

D.E. Toft grew up in Salford and eventually studied English at Cambridge University. He later spent much of his life in education and taught in the East End of London, industrial West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.

He now lives with his wife, Josephine, on the edge of Kinder Scout in the Peak District. He is chair of the Hayfield Kinder Trespass Group, which keeps alive the spirit of the 1932 Mass Trespass. He loves photography, playing guitar in a band with his wife and friends, walking on the wild moors of the Dark Peak and travelling around the globe.

He believes that as well as revealing great beauty in strange and exotic landscapes and architecture, travel also allows us to experience people living their day-to-day lives in different cultures and societies. And despite everything that governments and religions do to divide us, people everywhere share more in their common, caring humanity than ever separates us. After all, we all live on this tiny planet, whirling through a cold, dark, empty universe and we need to look after each other. There are no lifeboats for anyone if this ship sinks.

Customer Reviews
5.0
1 reviews
1 reviews
  • Geoff Bryant

    I picked up this book expecting a fairly standard procedural thriller but I was taken by surprise with the fluidity of the writing and storytelling. Derek Brown, an individual ground down by the system and beyond redemption finds both his professional and personal life are drawn together in an apparently mundane case. Unexpected turns of the plot are accompanied by equally surprising introspection, coupled with a ringingly strong, visceral, hatred of all things Tory. I cheered and laughed at the increasingly rabid takedown of Thatcherite Britain and its values. The clearly autobiographical background to the many drinking dens and locations adds a weight to the complex interweaving of plot and characters which is coupled to the realistically casual, indeed banal, killing of a major character that proves to be a masterstroke. It really is unputdownable. I look forward, eagerly, to following Derek Brown’s future journey through life.

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