THE BEST CRIME NOVEL OF 2024 – THE TIMES
BEST CRIME BOOKS OF 2024 – SUNDAY TIMES
BOOKS OF THE MONTH – THE GUARDIAN
‘I very much doubt I’ll read a better crime novel this year’ IAN RANKIN
‘Quite breathtaking’ DAILY MAIL
‘Superb’ THE GUARDIAN
‘Dominic Nolan is a wonderful writer’ CHRIS WHITAKER
‘Mind-blowing…so much more than a crime novel. An amazing piece of work’ SARAH PINBOROUGH
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.
‘Incredibly good… one of the most interesting, brilliant crime writers around’ JANE CASEY
‘What a triumph. What an absolutely magnificent achievement. Transporting, startling, and ultimately almost overwhelmingly powerful’ A.J. FINN
‘An extraordinary piece of work. The writing is beautiful and the world is entirely realistic in its brutality and moments of transcendence, reminiscent of Patrick Hamilton’s work and also Brighton Rock. A brilliant book’ HARRIET TYCE
‘This is one of the richest, most absorbing novels I’ve read all year’ TOM BENN
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
‘Crime writing of the highest quality’ DAILY MAIL
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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.
White City is a love letter to the gritty underbelly of last century London, one I struggled to leave. I fell in love with Lander (I defy you not to) and indeed with the very streets themselves. The violence is brutal, the grief is vivid, and yet I was spellbound. It's a masterpiece.
WHITE CITY is set to be the crime novel of the year: an epic immersion into 1950s London's gang violence, racial tension, riots and broken families, in the aftermath of the biggest robbery in British history....Nolan writes with enviable skill and subtlety about the brutal and profound. His prose is divine, sending you head over heels with his characters and then dashing your heart on the rocks. And we love him for it.
Terrific! A noir-drenched tapestry of 1950s London, in which two families struggle to survive as their lives crack apart like a bullet-riddled windscreen in the aftermath of robbery and murder. Crackling dialogue, biting humour, brutal action and issues that resonate today, all underscored by poignancy and compassion.
Provocative, compelling, and an immersive and timely depiction of 1950's London. Nolan grabs the reader by the scruff of the neck and frogmarches them through a city whose buildings and minds are scarred by war. Violence and death are nothing to the criminal who has seen such horrors on the battlefields of Europe. A complex, visceral plot populated with unforgettable often tragically flawed characters at the heart of which lies a beautiful almost fable-like love story
Mind-blowing...so much more than a crime novel. Entirely immersive, with such a brilliant cast of characters and a commentary that works for today, it's just frankly an amazing piece of work
White City is a triumph of British noir writing. The dark beauty of post-war London is explored in stark, fearless prose. Populated with characters unforgettable for both their humanity and monstrosity, White City is a complex exploration of inequality, criminality and heartbreaking betrayal.
'What a triumph. What an absolutely magnificent achievement. Transporting, startling, and ultimately almost overwhelmingly powerful'
An extraordinary piece of work. The writing is beautiful and the world is entirely realistic in its brutality and moments of transcendence, reminiscent of Patrick Hamilton's work and also Brighton Rock. A brilliant book.
Incredibly good... one of the most interesting, brilliant crime writers around
A major success....strongly recommended.
Quite breathtaking...as sweeping as anything by James Ellroy
The best crime novel I've read this year
Gripping
A gripping, atmospheric tale *****
Superb
A tremendous feat of mid-century conjuring: attentive to all manner of vanished moral and material minutiae, while practically Ellroyian in narrative shape, scope and verve. This is one of the richest, most absorbing novels I've read all year, with its cast of hell-seekers and heartbreakers, the hunters and the haunted. Nolan's achievement here is crime fiction as social history, as national reckoning.