Me Mam. Me Dad. Me.

Danny Croft is aged fourteen. He lives with his mother and her boyfriend Callum in Newcastle. Danny’s mother adores Callum. Callum keeps showering Danny with gifts, as a way of winning his affection. But when Callum loses his temper, he loses it completely. He is violent towards Danny’s mother.

Danny is frightened when he reads online about women dying from domestic violence. He makes up his mind that his mother will not become one such victim. Danny asks people at school who would be the best person to avert this danger. They all answer that person is Danny’s father. So Danny decides to seek out his biological father, whom he has never hitherto met, and ask him for a special favour. Will he please kill Callum? Duffy’s book recounts the meeting of father and son and the outcome of that meeting.

As a novelist Malcolm Duffy meets a challenge head on. The book is a first person narrative in a Geordie dialect. Never once does the authenticity of the narration waver. Duffy’s career as an advertising copywriter in the south has not weakened his grasp of his native dialect. The immediacy of the text is potent.