Pleasantville

It's a fascinatingly complex setting and Locke maps it with great skill, charting the struggles of her characters as the crime remains unsolved ... a smart legal thriller about how far people will go to gain power, and keep it. -- Jeff Noon * Spectator *
Genuinely unnerving ... subtle, complex questions of identity, family and history * Daily Mail *
This is a cinematic, panoramic view of African-American life, but it is also a sharp, tender account of Jay Porter's inner struggle ... brilliant. -- Isabel Berwick * FT *
In her first three novels, Locke has explored cultural history since the days of slavery. A future book will surely deal with race in the Obama and post-Obama era. That could be her best story yet - which, on the evidence of those she has already written, is saying something. -- Mark Lawson * Guardian *
An excellent thriller on one level, Locke's novel offers a beautifully detailed character in "Jay Edgar Porter", a bereaved father struggling to cope with his loss. The story also has a fascinating political angle in the dirty-tricks campaign, aimed at disrupting the power of the black voting bloc and prefigures the Rove-Bush strategy in the 2000 presidential election. All told, it's gripping blend of the personal and the political. - , -- Declan Burke * Irish Times *
As convincing as it is enthralling -- Boyd Hilton * Heat *
To say that Locke's debut, Black Water Rising - ambitious, socially committed and beautifully written - created a stir is almost to understate the case, and one wonders if it weighed heavily on her shoulders that she would be obliged to deliver something equally impressive as a follow-up. She did just that with The Cutting Season and now we have Pleasantville ... Pleasantville is every inch as impressive as its predecessors, with a new nuance and complexity burnishing the narrative ... the next time you find yourself in the company of a crime reviewer, don't bother asking who you should be reading. You know the answer: Attica Locke. -- Barry Forshaw * Independent *
A common selling point for the sorely missed HBO series "The Wire" is that it's the closest television has ever come to feeling like a novel. Attica Locke'sPleasantville is that novel. * Washington Independent Review of Books *
In Pleasantville, Attica Locke returns to Jay Porter, the black lawyer hero of her magnificent first novel, Black Water Rising. This one is just as good. -- Marcel Berlins * Times *
Outstanding...Locke just gets better and better as a writer. This is a grown-up, politically engaged novel as well as a moving portrait of a family upended by grief...a perfect read for election season -- Jake Kerridge * Sunday Express Magazine *
Ambitious, assured and compelling * Hot Press *
One of the Times' 'Ten best thrillers of the past ten years': Attica Locke's compassion for her characters lifts it into another class; you'll be rooting for Porter and his crew every step of the way. * Times *
Fantastic... couldn't put it down -- Gary Younge * New Statesman *