''What You Don't Know'' is the second novel in the ''Bone and Cane'' sequence by
David Belbin
David Lawrence Belbin (born 19 January 1958) is an English novelist.
He was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire and has lived in Nottingham since attending the University of Nottingham where he earned a degree in English Literature and American Studi ...
and was published in 2012. It was partly inspired by real life events in the late 1990s when
Nottingham's
Crack Awareness team (which Belbin calls the 'Crack Action Team') was run by one of the city's biggest drug dealers.
Belbin sets his novel in the aftermath of this scandal, rather than the scandal itself. The novel also deals with prostitution in the city's care homes, where protagonist Nick Cane is tutoring Jerry, the underage girlfriend of a dealer. Belbin's other protagonist, Sarah Bone,
MP, meanwhile, is suspected of murder, putting her ministerial career at risk.
Reviewing the novel in
The Guardian,
Cathi Unsworth
Cathi Unsworth is an English writer and journalist. After working for ''Melody Maker'' and ''Bizarre'', she began writing novels, with ''The Not Knowing'' in 2005 and ''The Singer'' in 2007, on Serpent's Tail. She also edited its ''London Noir' ...
wrote "It's a story rich in resonance: of how
New Labour sold out, leaving the children of cities such as Nottingham easy prey for organised crime; and a perceptive study of how the abuse of girls like Jerry is fuelling one almighty tinderbox."
Joan Smith in The Times described it as "a smart novel that recreates the heady atmosphere of Labour’s first months in power".
In an essay about the book, Belbin describes how he avoided naming the Labour
Home Secretary and discusses the ethics of using living figures in a novel. He talks about the assistance he was given by serving and former Labour MPs and reveals that one storyline was inspired by a girl he taught in the 1990s.
['What you Don't Know About Nottingham: Fact and Fiction in a Series of Political Crime Novels' in 'Crime' ed. Bradshaw, Five Leaves Publications, 2013.]
References
{{Reflist
Crime novel series