In recent years it’s become something of a publishing trend for novelists to issue playlists with their books. Often these lists feel a bit like cheating to me, poor attempts at conjuring a time period (my favourite 1990s tunes), mood (angsty adolescence) or subtext (danger!) that the writing should be doing itself.
Still, with Jacqueline Crooks’s debut novel, it’s hard to dismiss the soundtrack as a mere gimmick. It’s a great playlist for a start (Bob Marley & the Wailers’ Stir It Up, Lee Scratch Perry’s City Too Hot, Gregory Isaacs’ Night Nurse ). And music is integral to this ambitious, atmospheric story about the dub reggae scene of the late 1970s and 1980s.
Written in a percussive patois, Fire Rush centres on
