They gather evidence—fingerprints lifted from windows with tape, a wallet stained with blood—and lay traps to flush out the murderer. Harri’s mother is in a precarious situation, having made a deal with a man Julius who sells black-market visas and engages in other fraudulent activity, brutally strong-arming his clients. Despite the gritty backdrop, the gutter-England-English and the intense subject matter, there were many genuinely funny lines, and it nearly always rang true.

The title of this book, Pigeon English, is a play on words, echoing Harri’s idiosyncratic use of language, as he mixes British English with Ghanaian slang and Pidgin English (and, of course, the title also gestures to Harri’s love of pigeons). I can understand why the author chose to end the book like this, but I felt cheated more than shocked (and I presume the latter was the intended reaction). On the last day of school, Harri watches with delight as the Year 11 kids celebrate their newfound freedom. Harri's family in London consists of his mother, who works in a hospital maternity ward, and his older sister, Lydia.The first is that it is largely plotless -- instead it follows an 11-year-old immigrant from Ghana as he makes his way around the impoverished London estate new home. Harri admits that he was in love with Abena for “one day,” but that he stopped loving her because she was “very stupid. If you stand at the bottom where the tower meets the ground and put your arms out, you can pretend like you're a bird. Although X-Fire forgives Harri’s ignorance in that instance, Harri is later punished for not showing enough respect and deference to the Dell Farm Crew.

A member of Dance Club, Lydia befriends Miquita and Chanelle and enjoys normal adolescent behaviors, like gossiping and watching television dramas. I kept thinking of Simon Lelic's Rupture, which used multiple narrators to explore the issues surrounding a similarly shocking event - a school shooting - with far more effective results.

Although the premise behind it is interesting and novel enough- looking at the troubled marginalized youth in London's inner city from their own perspective - the execution was atrocious. One of the most urgent and important books of the year, Pigeon English is full of tragedy and despair but also shot through with a fragile but unwavering strand of hope. I also felt that the story was a little bit of a screen to educate the reader on the effect of poverty and violence on children and their families which weakened the overall power of the book.