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Speaker 1: Once again, I haven't left myself very much time for

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Speaker 1: the books. When it comes to thrillers. I have read

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Speaker 1: the first four of five of a series that was

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Speaker 1: new to me by a British author called Simon Mason,

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Speaker 1: and I've been reading the D. I. Wilkins series. In Oxford.

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Speaker 1: There's this weird coincidence that there are two detective inspectors,

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Speaker 1: both with the surname Wilkins and with the initial R.

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Speaker 1: One is Ray and the other is Ryan, and they

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Speaker 1: are as strongly contrasted in their personalities and their investigative

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Speaker 1: techniques as you can imagine. Ray is Black and Nigerian descent.

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Speaker 1: He was educated at Oxford. He's incredibly suave, he's wonderfully

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Speaker 1: well dressed, and he's very ambitious. And then Ryan is

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Speaker 1: an absolute mess, trailer trash, complete and utter trailer trash.

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Speaker 1: He dresses like somebody who is a third rate hoodlum

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Speaker 1: in a crack den somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

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Speaker 1: But he has the ability to think laterally and bring

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Speaker 1: incredibly incredible insights. And they clash, and obviously the chav

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Speaker 1: clashes with authority all of the time, and yet somehow

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Speaker 1: they seem to work together and over the four books,

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Speaker 1: their relationship goes up and down and sideways, but they

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Speaker 1: managed to solve a series of really interesting crimes. And

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Speaker 1: what's also fascinating is the way that Simon Mason writes

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Speaker 1: about Oxford. He obviously understands both the academic side of Oxford,

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Speaker 1: the gown part, and also the town part. And Oxford

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Speaker 1: Town has many areas of it which are not great,

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Speaker 1: rough sleepers, criminals, and so on, and he brings a

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Speaker 1: sharp spotlight onto each of those. They're really very good.

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Speaker 1: The reason I haven't read the fifth is because it

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Speaker 1: isn't available yet. It will be very shortly. But Simon

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Speaker 1: Mason the d I. Wilkins series and then the more

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Speaker 1: serious novel that I have read with quite a lot

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Speaker 1: of discomfort, which is exactly what the author, Jeanette McCurdy

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Speaker 1: wants me as a reader to feel. She's a former

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Speaker 1: Nickelodeon TV star and she wrote a memoir in twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty two which I also loved but was discomforted by,

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Speaker 1: called I'm Glad my mom died because her mother was

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Speaker 1: a very very strange person who put her daughter through

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Speaker 1: very very strange pressures. And half his age is Jeanette

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Speaker 1: McCurdy's first novel. It's a kind of reverse Lolita tale

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Speaker 1: and the protagonist the female Waldo. This all happens in Alaska,

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Speaker 1: and Waldo is seventeen years old, and she's kind of

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Speaker 1: weird and kind of ryan, kind of funny and kind

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Speaker 1: of clever, and she spends her days slutting around with

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Speaker 1: boys that she finds boring. She blows all of her

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Speaker 1: money on click baiting, not clickbaiting, a clicking on sheen

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Speaker 1: and Timu and getting stuff she doesn't want or doesn't need,

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Speaker 1: and it piles up in her life. She works at

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Speaker 1: Victoria's Secret, and she's so funny, she's so sardonic. These

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Speaker 1: one liners with this black, incredibly funny humor keep coming

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Speaker 1: from her. Her dad doesn't know who he is. He's

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Speaker 1: out of the picture. Mum's both a sex and a

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Speaker 1: love addict, which brings its own tensions. And then she

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Speaker 1: develops a crush on her creative writing teacher, mister Corgy

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Speaker 1: ko rg Y. And he's not attractive, shall we say?

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Speaker 1: He is forty years old, he's balding, he's got a

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Speaker 1: sizeable paunch, the hair on which she loves to lick

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Speaker 1: as she tells us in a discomforting way, and he's married,

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Speaker 1: but she's after him and he begins. He resists at first,

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Speaker 1: but then he gives in and they have the strength,

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Speaker 1: and you're just saying, girl, he's a loser. When are

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Speaker 1: you going to realize, girl, that he's a loser, this

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Speaker 1: person that you are with. And it's it's compulsive and

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Speaker 1: propulsive because it is so well written. But you're reading

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Speaker 1: and you're going, oh, oh, it's going to turn the

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Speaker 1: page and see what happens on the next page and

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Speaker 1: try and find out at what point she says, nah, nah,

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Speaker 1: not not him, not anymore. It's really good, but you

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Speaker 1: do need some level of tolerance in order to get

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Speaker 1: through it. And then the non fiction work is and

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Speaker 1: I'm just trying to find my notes. Here we go.

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Speaker 1: I found my notes. It's a book called Year of

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Speaker 1: the Rat undercover in the British far Right, and it's

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Speaker 1: by young journalist, young journalist activist called Harry Shukman s

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Speaker 1: h U K M A N. And he spent a

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Speaker 1: year penetrating far right groups and trying to understand them.

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Speaker 1: The basket Weavers, for example, a network of young men

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Speaker 1: with insul sympathies Britain first, and then some of the

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Speaker 1: very wealthy people, couples from Silicon Valley who believe the

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Speaker 1: strangest things about eugenics and intelligence and race, and they're

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's dangerous because he's filming all of this

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Speaker 1: with a hidden camera, and there are times when they

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Speaker 1: are going, are you a fed? Of course I'm not

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Speaker 1: a fed. And then he makes some racist remark and

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Speaker 1: puts himself back into and one of I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: really scary what these people believe, the rubbish that they believe.

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Speaker 1: But at the same time he he builds up a

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Speaker 1: weird kind of sympathy for them. They're all lonely, they've

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Speaker 1: got nothing in their lives beside the glue that connects

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Speaker 1: them to other lonely people through the set of misshapen

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Speaker 1: and indefensible beliefs. It's an extraordinary piece of journalism, of

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Speaker 1: the investigative journalism, and written up with with wit, with humor,

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Speaker 1: with insight, with understanding and compassion. It is called Year

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Speaker 1: of the Rat under Cover in the British Far Right

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Speaker 1: by Harry Shukman