Books - Making a drama out of sex for sale crisis.

Byline: RICHARD WILLIAMSON 

IN our new, hard-nosed, no-excuses society we're not supposed to feel sympathy for teenage prostitutes hanging around street corners in Balsall Heath.

But I couldn't help liking the funny, tragic, self-destructive, foul-mouthed, tough, vulnerable, pathetic schoolgirl tarts in Working Girls by Maureen Carter (Flambard, pounds 7.99).

This is a police thriller, not a social documentary, but there's a strong sense that Birmingham journalist Ms Carter has a few bees buzzing in her bonnet that go beyond a simple murder tale.

It begins with the brutal killing of a 15-year-old schoolgirl prostitute, then a second girl is beaten into a coma and another disappears.

For Detective Sergeant Bev Morriss, it all becomes a little too personal. Unable to maintain the necessary professional detachment, she becomes obsessed with one particular suspect.

But, sleazy as he may be, is he the right man?

She also finds herself drawn to the girls in the street, even going undercover with them in an effort to trap the monster.

More than anything, she takes it upon herself to speak up for the girls in a hostile, intolerant world that treats them with undisguised loathing.

This is a novel that can sometimes be exhausting in its relentlessly smart-mouthed comments and dialogue. But you need something to lighten what might otherwise be a very grim tale.

There's much familiar material in the police fiction tradition - a feisty female detective, a stern but kindly boss, an unpleasant sexist detective inspector, an Asian copper bravely ignoring the racists and so on.

But Ms Carter also has some important points to make about the real world.

How, for instance, can girls who are supposed to be in the care of the local council end up on the streets selling themselves for sex?

This is a question the Sunday Mercury has asked in the past - involving real, rather than imaginary, girls.

She also draws a flesh-crawling hate figure in her vitriolic portrait of oily, smooth, violent pimp Charlie Hawes.

Snooty teachers don't get much sympathy and nor do the local residents with their lynch-mob mentality and vigilante patrols to clean up the streets.

Although Ms Carter acknowledges her debt for the help given her by Wolverhampton vice squad, the action takes place in Birmingham.

The landscape is familiar if not exactly factual, being an all-purpose inner-city setting but studded with real places - Balsall Heath, Highgate, Kings Heath, a pub called The Fighting Cocks, a private park not unlike the one in Moseley and so on.

However, Ms Carter's real concern is with the womenfolk - battered wives, angry policewomen and teenagers whose homes are not simply broken but shattered into a million pieces.

There is the occasional hint of a caricature among the bit players but the characters that work best are the teenagers themselves.

They are not sentimentalised tarts with hearts of gold, nor are they corrupted innocents - but they are definitely victims.

The ultimate test of any book is whether or not you care what happens to the characters and I found that I minded quite a lot about Jules, Vick, Chloe, Patty, Shell and the rest of them.

They are drawn with sympathy and understanding, if not approval.

The best crime fiction works if the background seems authentic and this one rings pretty true.

Except for one thing - the first murder happens on a Saturday and the police press conference is attended by one not very believable yob of an evening newspaper reporter.

If you wanted to get it right, Maureen, you would have known that the Sunday Mercury would have been there - doing the job properly.

CAPTION(S):

CONCERNED... Maureen Carter