#Review - The Associate by Victoria Goldman

The Associate (Shanna Regan 2)
Victoria Goldman
Three Crowns Publishing UK, 25 July 2023 
Available as: PB, 328pp, e  
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781739695439

I'm grateful to Three Crowns Publishing for sending me a copy of The Associate to consider for review.

The Associate sees a new investigation for Shanna Regan, Goldman's restless investigative reporter who she introduced in The Redeemer.

Now Shanna's been asked to look into the disappearance of a young architect, the "Associate" of the title. Short of money and wanting distraction from the awful prospect of a steady job with a news magazine, which she ought to be focussing on, Shanna takes up the offer - and soon finds that Louisa's absence isn't the only strange thing going on in East London suburb of Emberley Green.

Louisa's work involves a project to convert a Reform synagogue to provide housing for asylum seekers, and some of the locals aren't happy about that. Others are just plain anti-Semitic, and the themes of Goldman's first book - the prejudice that can exist in plain sight, the ignorance of our neighbours' ways of life and concerns - are highlighted here from the start, an angry demonstration opening the book, setting the scene for what follows.

It isn't just bigotry, though, that stalks the streets of Emberley Green. As Shanna gets deeper and deeper into things, a troubling series of apparent gang-related killings - stabbings, shootings and more - begins to spread terror across the streets of Emberley Green. This atmosphere is evoked in one particularly atmospheric scene that emphasises Shanna's own vulnerability on the streets late at night. Several times she is on the point of dropping her investigation, and several times she hesitates - something pulling her back into the case (and leading her to joke with a journalist friend that the two of them ought to set up as PIs... now there's an idea...)

There is, as it turns out, a great deal more going on than one missing woman (and even that aspect has many sides to it). The personal, and societal, problems come together in a rich and credible tapestry that challenges everyone involved - and perhaps the reader, too - to consider where they stand.

I'm really enjoying this series, in which Goldman highlights a (to many of us) fascinating and unknown strand of Jewish life, setting it in its wider context to give a vivid and urgent portrayal of modern London life in all its messy reality.

I would strongly recommend.

For more information about The Associate, see the publisher's website here. You can order the book from your local bookshop, or buy from Foyles, Waterstones or Amazon.