West Richardson Street A Novel About High Wycombe

‘Life is one big road with a lot of signs, signs and more signs you've got to make up your mind to face reality all the time.’Badmarsh & Shri/Tenor Saw/Bob MarleyShiraz is a newly appointed Police Community Support Officer who discovers the body of an Asian prostitute Mandy in a skip in West Richardson Street, High Wycombe. The investigations lead him to a local taxi driver Asif and a journalist Stacy who works for a local newspaper. Running alongside this is the story of Anna the daughter of a furniture worker in High Wycombe in 1913 and her adventures during these heady times in the town’s history. In the background is the spectre of the Assassin whose agenda of racial terrorism drives the story to a profound climax. West Richardson Street is about the past and the present histories of High Wycombe. About lives lost over pieces of dirt and how particular roads and areas of the town resonate with dark and unspoken tales. It’s about placing the arrival of Asian and African Caribbean people to Buckinghamshire in a historical context and making them part of this history rather than existing outside of it. West Richardson Street looks at the town throughout the ages but in particular before the war where the furniture industry in High Wycombe was at its height, the early eighties where there were riots and finally 2007 and the paranoid times after the 2006 terror raids.‘The lie was powerful. It had wrapped itself over the Chiltern Hills and the fabric of the County. It was embedded into the DNA of the mighty and the powerful and covered up a multitude of sins.’