Please note that you will not find any unfavourable reviews here. I only write reviews on books that I enjoyed reading.

Saturday 27 December 2008

A Fair Cop by Michael Bunting

This is one of my favourite types of books. The genre has many different names; a true life story, an autobiography, a memoir, non fiction and so on.

A Fair Cop is all of those and more. I fear this review will not do it justice. I have struggled to get into words the impact it has had on me.

Michael Bunting is a very skilled writer, the story grabbed hold of me from the first page and held me engrossed till the very last word. I wanted to read it all in one sitting but the words in A Fair Cop reminded me that it is important to let life get in the way of a book, no matter how interesting the reading may be.

A Fair Cop made me reassess my priorities, revaluate all the things that I held most dear. By the time I finished reading this magnificent book I had a strong urge to hold those I love nice and close but I also felt cleansed and somehow renewed.

Although this book contains one of the most harrowing, shocking tales I have read in the past few years, it is also filled with a raw insight into the ability of the power of 'good' to tuck itself away in places you'd least expect.

Michael Bunting had his eyes opened to this remarkable quality by being stripped of most things that he cherished. In this memoir he shares his new found insight.


Between the covers of this book are some twisted, crazy angry people, many painful insights into the raw emotional and physical brutality of human nature but also and most importantly there are unexpectedly beautiful insights into life, fear, love, hope and kindness.

There are some amazing characters in this book and the most impressive of all is the the author himself with this display of unpretentious inner strength. I suspect that he would want to disagree with that statement as what comes across on every page is the humility of this very talented author.

I am amazed that this is his debut novel and look forward to reading anything else he chooses to write.


I was very pleased to read that Michael is writing another book.

You can read some more traditional style of reviews of A Fair Cop by clicking
here here, here

You can find out lots more about Michael Bunting's writing
here

A Fair Cop is published by The Friday Project (an imprint of Harper Collins).

You can buy copies from here, here or here

4 comments:

Rachel Green said...

Was this the chap that used to have a blog?

DJ Kirkby said...

Hi Rachel
I am not sure who you are referring to but Michael's blog is here: http://www.afaircop.co.uk/blog/

Michael said...

I can't thank you enough for this fantastic review. This is what dreams are made of and it's now real for me.

Your comments are graciously received and I am flattered that you refer to me as a 'very skilled writer.'

I am writing my second book and will keep my blog updated.

Thank you again for this eagerly anticipated moment. It has made the years of toil worthwhile.
Michael.

Maddy said...

Thank you.