The Riot ActThe PublisherThe AuthorPress Comment
Undercover police 'protestors'Chapter eight - a short extractIn the news: who's been reading The Riot Act?Swampy
Class war meets Le Carre in this ferocious debut, a millennial thriller set in a terror-struck London on the edge of collapse. Dutchie is a street fighting anarchist who is forced to confront his middle class upbringing. When his New Age girlfriend, Annalese, is killed by a bomb blast in Oxford Street, he vows revenge. But how can he find those who did it? The terrorists are "sleeping" in the City, posing as foreign exchange dealers. The security services need someone to go after them - someone who is expendable. In return for a clean police file, Dutchie is given the chance. Set in Greenwich and Cornwall, The Riot Act charts the transformation of a dreadlocked class warrior into a yuppie living with a woman called Charlotte. It explores the nineties world of violent protesters who turn up for a fight rather than a cause, a disaffected MI5, and the City, where the dealing rooms trade in their own brand of mayhem. Direct a brick lobbed into a police cordon, compelling as the answering blast of teargas, this is crime fiction from way out on the cutting edge.
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The PublisherSerpent's Tail was started by Pete Ayrton in 1986 to give a voice to
writers from outside of the mainstream, and to do it with style.
Inspired by continental paperback original publishing houses, it has achieved notable successes over the past decade, including Walter
Mosley, Dennis Cooper, Luisa Valenzuela, Kenzaburo Oe,
Alison Fell, Neil Bartlett and William S Burroughs. During its first year, Serpent's Tail published twelve books, six
of which were translations. Now they publish more than 35 books
a year, and are known for their original British and American
fiction, music and popular culture books, crime fiction,
translations and themed short story anthologies such as
Seduction, Bad Sex and Obsession. 
The Riot Act is being published in the Mask Noir imprint. Since its beginning in 1988, Mask Noir has quickly
established itself. Reflecting the concerns of Serpent's Tail, it
publishes literary crime novels in paperback original. Early successes were established British writers (Julian Rathbone, Derek Raymond) who were published alongside new voices from Europe (Montalban,
Daeninckx) and discoveries from the US which included Walter Mosley and
Alex Abella. In the last two years, Mask Noir has published a new posse of home-grown (British) writers - Stella Duffy, Nicholas Blincoe, Graeme Gordon, Ken Bruen - whose work has been seen as a direct confrontation with the prevailing 'cosy' view that dominates the British crime fiction scene. The writers Mask Noir publishes have in common the belief that crime fiction must capture the often random violence of contemporary society. P D James' recent claim that the middle-classes are the subject of crime fiction because only they are able to make moral choices is typical of the class bias that has dominated British crime writing. New crime writers are coming forward to chronicle a society riven by class, gender and race conflicts. The best of these writers are being published by Mask Noir.
"As a reviewer, there is no other crime publishing house whose offerings I look forward to with greater pleasure. I can be sure that a Serpent's Tail book will be original, provocative, imaginative, powerful, thought-provoking - and, of course, highly entertaining . . ." - Marcel Berlins, Crime Fiction Reviewer, The Times.
"Mask Noir has done an immense service to crime fiction in Britain, both in introducing foreign writers and giving fresh blood a chance. For Mosley, Abella, Blincoe, Duffy and all the other new dogs in the reservoir, we owe you one!" - Mike Ripley, Crime Critic, The Daily Telegraph.Top
Jon Stock,31, works as a freelance journalist, writing features for the broadsheets and middle market tabloids. He is also London correspondent for The Week - India's leading news weekly magazine. Stories include spending a week with the legendary Kodo drummers of Japan for The Independent, visiting France's casinos with a professional blackjack player for GQ (he gambled his article fee and doubled it), and exposing a link between the Conservative Party and a British arms dealer who air-dropped AK 47s on a remote village in north east India (for The Week).In 1996, he won the Commonwealth Journalists Association travel bursary and spent much of the year living on an island in Cochin harbour, Kerala, southern India. His time was divided between working on The Week and, for the bursary, studying the relationship between newspapers and literacy.Research for The Riot Act, his first novel, took him to Cornwall, where he wrote the book. He also spent some time in a foreign exchange dealing room in the City of London. He is currently living in Greenwich with his wife, Hilary, and they both hope to return soon to southern India, the setting for his next novel. Top"While arts nobs all over the country are anxiously scanning the index of Sir Roy Strong's waspish diaries (see Books, page 3), praying that they may have rated a mention, Dame Stella Rimington - former head of MI5, and recently appointed to the board of M&S - is doing her best to dodge a more visceral brand of literary notoriety. The former spycatcher is heavily featured in a darkly sparkling new millennial crime thriller - The Riot Act - in which novelist Jon Stock posits the terrifying theory that Rimington was, in fact, working for M&S while running MI5. Certainly, this might explain the high levels of radioactivity occasionally registered in supermarket prawns. And the fact that, as Stock points out, for many years the only newspaper photograph of Rimington was a fuzzy shot of her holding a white M&S carrier bag..."
Novelists are having to discover ever more cunning methods of making their books walk off the shelves. But few can rank with the efforts of journalist-turned-thriller-writer Jon Stock, who last week persuaded unsuspecting airport announcers across Britain to broadcast the following plug over the Tannoys to waiting passengers: "Would Jon Stock, author of The Riot Act, please meet his publisher, Serpent's Tail, outside WH Smith's." Ingenious - though it's remarkable that the canny Stock stopped at asking them to broadcast the price, too.
The Times City diary caused a stir amongst London foreign exchange on the 24th September, when they published the following item: Run RiotFrom Bank tube station, cross Cornhill and cut down to Lombard Street. Can you see "a dull grey office block"? Down towards Cannon Street, by my reckoning, which probably makes it to the east of St Swithins Lane. The actual dealing room is dingy and low-ceilinged (aren't they all?) containing 15, maybe 20, traders. The only other clue I have is the carpet, "cheap blue and tiled". Not much to go on, but if you can identify this foreign exchange dealer, you know where Jon Stock did the research for his first novel, The Riot Act. Stock, a stranger to the world of the City, was smuggled into two forex dealing rooms last year as part of his research for the thriller, published this week. He is therefore honour-bound not to reveal which dealers, but one at lest matches the above describition. "A mate of mine let me come in and sit on the dealing room floor for a while to pick up on the banter," he says. His central character makes a similar journey into the unknown. A Swampy-like environmental protester, he is forced to shave off his dreadlocks and take up a job in the City, for reasons too compex to detain us here. The idea came from a genuine character stock met on his explorations, a middle-class drop-out activist who is now a successful forex dealer - and is now worried that his past life will one day be revealed.Top
TopGlenn Hoddle may be tender in years and in his infancy as an international manager but he did not shy away from reading the riot act to his new charges last night. Hoddle admitted that he "had some stern words" at half-time even though England were leading 2-1. Hoddle said: "The players responded positively. The goal we conceded was a sloppy one to give away, a dreadful goal and we spoke about how we could win the ball back."
Mr John Major failed yesterday to endorse the views of his Chancellor, Mr Kenneth Clarke, on a single currency, and told the Cabinet that public debate on Europe must stop......The Prime Minister's strictures were said to have been heard without dissent. Although Tory MPs welcomed Mr Major's decision to read the Riot Act to the Cabinet, the truce on Europe is unlikely to last. Mr Norman Lamont, the former Chancellor, is to make a speech in Oxford today countering Mr Clarke's arguments on the potential benefits of a single currency.
Foreign Policy: End all foreign aid. No more bail-outs for "corrupt deceitful regimes that lie to us", like Mexico. Emasculate the United Nations. Read the riot act to the G7 industrial powers, which he calls the "Socialist International". No more "peace-keeping": "That's how we end up in somebody else's war." As soon as possible, withdraw completely from Japan and Europe and let them defend themselves. America First above all.
The Directors of Camelot will offer to give up future bonuses at a crisis meeting tomorrow with Heritage Secretary Chris Smith. Mr Smith is preparing to read the riot act and will warn Camelot's Chairman, Sir George Russell, and chief executive, Tim Holley, they could lose the lucrative contract to run the National Lottery when it ends in 2001 if executives are paid further 'fat cat' bonuses.
On a host of issues, including corruption and media freedom, Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, has said he expects "frank exchanges" with Muslim, Serb and Croat leaders.
BBC chairman reads The Riot Act to executives after staff protests (The Guardian, September 1997)Sir Christopher Bland was said to be furious at the way the proposals to replace programme editors with five "super-editors" had been handled. One senior source said that Sir Christopher had "read the riot act" to Mr Birt and Mr Hall.
...Bug believes that Bill sits in his window in the Admin Building and watches how staffers walk across the Campus. Bug believes that Bill keeps note of who avoids the paths and uses the fastest routes to get from A to B, and that Bill rewards these devil-may-care trailblazers with promotions and stock, in the belief that their code will be just as innovative and dashing. We all ended up soaking wet, with Oregon Grape stains on our Dockers by the time we got to the library, and on the way back we read the Riot Act and said that Bug had to stop geeking out and learn to enculturate, and that for his own good he should take the path-and he agreed. ... Microserfs. p27 (Douglas Coupland)Top
