{"id":12325,"date":"2019-04-15T19:15:12","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T23:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=12325"},"modified":"2019-04-15T19:15:12","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T23:15:12","slug":"the-common-enemy-by-paul-gitsham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=12325","title":{"rendered":"‘The Common Enemy,’ by Paul Gitsham"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I\u2019ve been going through<\/strong> Paul Gitsham\u2019s DCI Warren Jones series, and frankly it\u2019s getting harder to carry on. The books have always been a little dreary, but The Common Enemy<\/a><\/em> is positively depressive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the fictional town of Middlesbury where Jones is Chief\nInspector, a \u201csuper-mosque\u201d is scheduled to be built. There has been considerable\npush-back from white supremacist groups. On a night when a far-right party had\nscheduled a demonstration, police pulled protection away from an existing\nmosque to keep the peace at the parade. Someone then set fire to the mosque,\nand two people were left injured, close to death. On top of that, one of the\nleaders of the racist party leading the march was found stabbed to death in an\nalley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspector Jones and his team (and superiors) have to walk on\neggshells as they try to untangle a snakes\u2019 nest of hatred, fear, prejudice,\nand paranoia. If they can\u2019t find who set the fire, minorities will accuse them\nof covering up for bigots. If they can\u2019t solve the murder, far-right extremists\nwill make the man a martyr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all leads to a shocking climax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book was well-written, but it had few rewards for me. I\nfelt I\u2019d fought my way through a lot of tension and unpleasantness, only to get\na punch in the gut at the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On top of that, although author Gitsham did a pretty good\njob treating all his characters \u2013 including the slimy racists \u2013 as human beings\nwith individual stories, and indeed in spreading some of the guilt around, I\nnoticed that one group came off as utterly innocent and entirely made up of\nvictims. That was the Muslims. You can\u2019t blame the author, I suppose. You\u2019re\npretty much not allowed to allow for any sin within Islam, in modern\npublishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I didn\u2019t find the book very rewarding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been going through Paul Gitsham\u2019s DCI Warren Jones series, and frankly it\u2019s getting harder to carry on. The books have always been a little dreary, but The Common Enemy is positively depressive. In the fictional town of Middlesbury where Jones is Chief Inspector, a \u201csuper-mosque\u201d is scheduled to be built. There has been considerable … Continue reading ‘The Common Enemy,’ by Paul Gitsham<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[692,2154,2818],"class_list":["post-12325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-dci-warren-jones","tag-paul-gitsham","tag-the-common-enemy"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}