Just what the hell is going on in Seb Duncan’s new novel?
Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash
I’m going to tell you a story.
A teenage boy is tricked into committing a crime by an elder. The boy then becomes a gang member and rises through the ranks by snagging more recruits, and so the cycle continues.
Sounds familiar? Thought so.
No, it’s not an episode of Top Boy but a Victorian fable that was, like the hit Netflix series, based on real life. The idea that child exploitation was rife in the 19th Century, and is still part of the experience of inner-city teenagers today, is an interesting one and this was the springboard for my new novel, The Book of Thunder and Lightning. But I needed more research, so I dug deeper.