Imagine Brexit on steroids where GDPR has been consigned to the bin and the resident of number 10 has assumed the role of Data Controller for a society in which privacy is fast becoming the privilege of power. This is Big Brother for the internet age as the English Reclamation Party (ERP) dictate a nationalistic manifesto for a dystopian Britain.
Prime Minister Cole, bearing a passing resemblance to an over-achieving Nigel Farage, is systematically abusing the power bestowed on him by a guileless electorate but it is the accidental hero, Jimmy Lincoln, whose literal and metaphorical fall from grace triggers a chain of events that results in seismic political revelations.
His sister Rosa though is the emotional conscience in this Machiavellian plot. Spiritually and physically destroyed by Jimmy’s death and the ensuing media maelstrom, she struggles to reconcile the printed word, enhanced by the power of social media, with the reality of her childhood memories.
The author paints a dark picture of a population living in fear of an imagined enemy striving to dispossess them of their national identity. This is a soulless place inhabited by the seemingly downtrodden, whose underclass are forced to live on the fringes of society, as the brainwashing effects of a totalitarian press voice the government’s message using a subtle blend of plausible deception and ruthless intimidation.
Fake news, an unbalanced leader and a misunderstood people feeling under threat from an uninvited foreign influx – sound familiar? By creating this fictional parallel world, the author cleverly mirrors the possible end game of an unaccountable power base built on a foundation of lies.
Gridless appear to provide the only hope for truth as they secretly wage a cyber war for the hearts and minds of the people as a potentially explosive denouement seems ever more likely. The author has created a set of fatally flawed characters with the good struggling to outweigh the bad and in doing so she captures the belief, in the reader, that good will somehow prevail.
Poster Boy by N J Crosskey (Published by Legend Press. Price £8.99). Buy the book on Amazon.
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