Jeff Noon, Doubleday

After making his name writing Science Fiction novels such as ‘Vurt’ and ‘Pollen’, Jeff Noon’s first foray into the police procedural is lifted out of the ordinary by dint of the unusualness of the case. It’s 1981 and Detective Inspector Hobbes gets caught up in the Brixton riots, which doesn’t end well for one of his colleagues. A pall is cast over the inspector and he is transferred to a new station where he is assigned a new case in which an up and coming singer has been found dead with unusual marks carved into his face. Turns out these marks relate to the mask worn by a feted glam rock singer called King Lost, an enigmatic figure in the David Bowie mould who killed himself back in 1975. Not only does Hobbes get drawn into a demi-monde of obsessive fans and mythical worlds, but he must also negotiate the hostility of his team andtry to find out what really went down during the Brixton riots.