GB84: The classic novel about the miners' strike - Softcover

On one level GB84 works as a historically precise, week-by-week account of the strike. But it is also a conspiracy thriller laced with apocalyptic poetry. Its power lies in it mixture of documentary realism and enigmatic fantasy, its exploration of the intimate betrayals that constitute an epic social tragedy. (Independant)

David Peace's GB84 will serve as a record - it brings to life the reality of the miners' strike in all its grisly detail ... It's as flecked with blood, spittle and bile as the conflict itself, and will serve as a fitting testament to the real cost of Thatcher's iron will. (Arena)

The novel's bite is matched by its swallow. ... The writing is clever, terse, incisive. The sentences short. This mammoth conspiracy tale is a thriller daubed with horror, a mirror signalling Britain's future ... GB84 is a commentary, a how-dunnit without revisionism, sentiment or nostalgia ... In the end his triumph signals tragedy. You read. You reel. You ponder. In the pondering lies the portent of the tale. (Tom Adair Scotsman)

The British James Ellroy, Peace has also moved from the crime genre to a broader, bloodier canvas, excavating the dank world of Eighties politics ... When the reader comes up for air at the apocalyptic end, it is with a sense of the futility, the waste and above all the ugliness (on all sides) of the strike that changed British politics forever. Highly recommended. (James Hundleby Jack)

Stylish, riveting and appalling, GB84 is a shocking fictional documentation of the violence, sleaze and fraudulence that characterised Thatcher's Britain. Great Britain. 1984. The miners' strike. It is the closest Britain has come to civil war in fifty years, setting the government against the people. In his trademark visceral prose, Peace describes the insidious workings of the boardroom negotiations and the increasingly anarchic coalfield battles; the struggle for influence in government and the dwindling powers of the NUM; and the corruption, intrigue and dirty tricks which run through the whole like a fault in a seam of coal. David Peace has written a novel extraordinary in its reach, and unflinching in its capacity to recreate the brutality and passion that changed the course of British history in the late twentieth century. 'A genuine British original.' Guardian 'Peace is a writer of such immense talent and power . . . If Northern noir is the crime fashion of the moment, Peace is its most brilliant designer.' The Times