Newsnight Review discussed the novel Soul Circus by George P Pelecanos.

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(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

MARK KERMODE:
On the good front, I haven't read his previous books, so I wasn't familiar with the characters, you pick them up, it's fine. It has its heart so solidly in the right place, it's almost overdone. It's like a John Singleton movie. The message is guns are the problem, poverty creates crime. This is done solidly and correctly and perhaps overdone. My problem is it has a hip-speak in the way in which the characters talk about music and books which to me refers to some extent to the films of Quentin Tarantino or even the work of Nick Hornby where characters worry about their record collection. There's loads of stuff for film geeks like me when two characters start talking about a film with a redneck sheriff, I think, they're talking about Walking Talk. Then 20 pages later you discover that's the film they're talking about and you're quite chuffed, so I don't believe in the characters. I think it's superficial. It's a good description of an area of Washington because it's a divided city. It's interesting in locating it as a southern place. It's more flimsy than it thinks it is. The fact it wears its heart on its sleeve so much is to its credit and discredit.

LAWSON:
Ian, what I liked about it is there's a lot of works about capital punishment. But this has a new angle that if you happen to survive the slaughter on the streets of Washington as a young black male, the state will then kill you. I thought he worked that balance very well in it.

IAN HISLOP:
And the detective ends up saying, I'm not defending you but your rights. That's a good line. The thing I liked, which of all the miserable offerings we've had this week, this was probably the least miserable, there's a detective called Strange who isn't. He's happily married, Germaine, very happily married.

GERMAINE GREER:
He's only just married remember.

HISLOP:
He ends up saying that it's important for men how to love one woman and be there for your children. How about that for a dysfunctional private eye.

GREER:
I think this is a really, really dumb book. I despise this book. Its sexism is barely concealed. The description of what's her name, Ashley Swan, screwing her black man is written with such bile. This hideous descriptions of her�

KERMODE:
I think that's completely unfair.

GREER:
We had the good woman, Janine, who waits behind the screen door when she's expecting her man to come home, and when he leaves the office, because she works for him in a menial capacity, needless to say�

KERMODE:
For a start, the sex scene, one thing he does do is he attempts to slip into the character's voices and languages, but the descriptions of the women are never intended to be overall narrator saying this is how women are. It's always one of the characters describing their relationship with the woman.

GREER:
No, that's not true.

KERMODE:
It's good to see a novel in which at the centre is a decent relationship.

GREER:
That is not true! The descriptions of Ashley Swan having sex with her man are by the impersonal narrator, not made by anyone else.

KERMODE:
I don't think any of it is made by an impersonal narrator.

GREER:
Because it's not impersonal. He's so busy being PC. This book is by Mickey Spillane. I think it's disgusting.