An excellent thriller on one level, Locke's novel offers a beautifully detailed character in "Jay Edgar Porter", a bereaved father struggling to cope with his loss. The story also has a fascinating political angle in the dirty-tricks campaign, aimed at disrupting the power of the black voting bloc and prefigures the Rove-Bush strategy in the 2000 presidential election. All told, it's gripping blend of the personal and the political. -- Declan Burke * Irish Times *
Genuinely unnerving ... subtle, complex questions of identity, family and history * Daily Mail *
In her first three novels, Locke has explored cultural history since the days of slavery. A future book will surely deal with race in the Obama and post-Obama era. That could be her best story yet - which, on the evidence of those she has already written, is saying something. -- Mark Lawson * Guardian *
As convincing as it is enthralling. -- Boyd Hilton * Heat *
It's a fascinatingly complex setting and Locke maps it with great skill, charting the struggles of her characters as the crime remains unsolved ... a smart legal thriller about how far people will go to gain power, and keep it. -- Jeff Noon * Spectator *
To say that Locke's debut, Black Water Rising - ambitious, socially committed and beautifully written - created a stir is almost to understate the case, and one wonders if it weighed heavily on her shoulders that she would be obliged to deliver something equally impressive as a follow-up. She did just that with The Cutting Season and now we have Pleasantville ... Pleasantville is every inch as impressive as its predecessors, with a new nuance and complexity burnishing the narrative ... the next time you find yourself in the company of a crime reviewer, don't bother asking who you should be reading. You know the answer: Attica Locke. -- Barry Forshaw * Independent *
A common selling point for the sorely missed HBO series "The Wire" is that it's the closest television has ever come to feeling like a novel. Attica Locke'sPleasantville is that novel. * Washington Independent Review of Books *
In Pleasantville, Attica Locke returns to Jay Porter, the black lawyer hero of her magnificent first novel, Black Water Rising. This one is just as good. -- Marcel Berlins * Times *
Outstanding...Locke just gets better and better as a writer. This is a grown-up, politically engaged novel as well as a moving portrait of a family upended by grief...a perfect read for election season -- Jake Kerridge * Sunday Express Magazine *
This is a cinematic, panoramic view of African-American life, but it is also a sharp, tender account of Jay Porter's inner struggle ... brilliant. -- Isabel Berwick * FT *
Ambitious, assured and compelling * Hot Press *
The Independent's Best Crime Books of 2015: Explosive political issues infuse the expertly orchestrated suspense. -- Barry Forshaw * Independent *
Pleasantville is another superb example of Locke's personalised genre of African-American-political-recent-historical thrillers, as a murderous mayoral race in Houston in 1996 exposes an attempt at social engineering in the 1940s. In a crowded field in which even stars follow traditions, Locke has the feel of a true original. -- Mark Lawson * Guardian *
