Synopsis: The Crew didn't think things could ever get that bad again. They were seriously wrong. Things have calmed down for the Crew (Billy, Ellie, Della, Jas and Will) and life in the Ghetto is ticking on as usual. But things are about to kick-off all over again. The police have launched Operation Clean-up and dealers are regularly being pulled off the street and into the police station. Someone's got to be grassing them up, and soon Nanny and the Crew are getting blamed. Billy is mugged, Ellie is picked on in school, and Billy's house is being targeted. The Crew need to find out who's pointing the finger before things get really serious

Review: Set in a bleak inner-city environment where crime, poverty and drug dealing seem to dominate peoples’ lives, this is a harrowing story. But, despite the often depressing background and frequent violence, it is a story about friendship, family, loyalty and responsibility.

Billy, the first person narrator, sets the scene, filling in details of what has gone before, introducing the crew, his gang and the closest thing to a family that he has. ‘Our streets were a place where you had to be in a crew, otherwise you’d get picked on, and I had learned from an early age that being part of a collective made things safer.’ Despite the successful outcome of their activities in the previous novel, it is evident that all is not well at the beginning of this sequel. Jas, one of the crew, has moved to another part of the city and is no longer keeping in touch. Once a close friend of Della, Ellie, Billy and Will he seems to be preoccupied with something else; he is not responding to their frequent texts. His friends fear for his safety.

Billy’s story is told in his own words; a third person narrator tells what is happening to Jas; the mysterious ‘whisper’, which dominates the action, emerges in a series of phone calls which alert the reader to the danger to come. The ‘whisper’ is spreading the rumour that Billy is the grass responsible for the increased number of police raids on drug dealers in the city; Jas, seduced by his drug dealing cousins and his increasing addiction, is being manipulated to take revenge and punish Billy. As readers, we watch the action reaching its horrific and inevitable climax.

Bali Rai wants to reach an audience who do not find much in the books written for them that reflect their lives. Billy remembers ‘comparing the stories I read to my own life and finding nothing in them that spoke to me about what things were really like. That was why I'd stopped reading by the time I went to secondary school.' Secondary school pupils will recognise much that is relevant to their lives in the 21st century in this uncompromising series. They will recognise the inner-city terraced streets, the graffiti, the groups of hooded youngsters, the flash cars of the drug dealers, the music that thunders from cars and houses, the fast food outlets, drab community centres and will empathise with Billy's sense of exclusion, 'the police couldn't help people like us. Not where we lived. That was the way things were for the people society cared about. Not for us.'

The Whisper is a challenging and provocative novel.

2008-01-04