The Treatment

by Michael Nath

At a bus stop in south London, black teenager Eldine Matthews is murdered by a racist gang. Twenty years later, L Troop's top boys - models of vice, deviance and violence - are far beyond justice. There are some people the law will not touch.

But Eldine's murder is not forgotten. His story is once again on everyone's lips and the streets of south London; a story of police corruption and the elimination of witnesses. A solicitor, a rent boy, a one-eyed comedian and his minder are raising ghosts; and Carl Hyatt, disgraced reporter, thinks he knows why.
There's one man linking this crew of rambunctious dandies and enchanting thugs, and it's the man Carl promised never to challenge again: Mulhall, kingpin of London's rotten heart and defender of L Troop's racist killers. Carl must face up to the morality of retribution and the reality of violence knowing that he is the weak link in the chain; and that he has placed everyone he loves within Mulhall's reach.

The Treatment is steeped in London's criminal past, its shadows of corruption and institutional racism. Like a seventeenth-century revenge tragedy, its characters reel from the streets, bars and brothels, hyperarticulate and propelled by wild justice.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Contemporary

464 pages, Hardcover

First published March 5, 2020

Reviews

[Paromjit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael Nath's imaginative, confident, erudite and original storytelling provided me with one of the most joyous reading experiences in recent times. Its scope is extraordinary as it draws on the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence that rocked the British establishment to its core when a public enquiry excoriated the society in which such grotesque crimes took place with impunity and a police force that failed to bring the perpetrators to justice, concluding that the police were institutionally racist. In this comic, witty and tragic novel, at a bus stop in South London, black teenager Eldine Matthews is murdered by a racist gang. Decades later, L Troops brutal thugs have evaded justice, protected by Michael Mulhall, a powerful London crime boss aiming for respectability.

Disgraced journalist Carl Hyatt lost his job after 'libelling' Mulhall, now working in a career ending post at the free newspaper The Chronicle run by editor, Andy Ravage. Eldine's murder has not been forgotten and whispers reach the ears of Carl, whispers he cannot ignore as an old acquaintance re-enters his life, criminal defence lawyer Victor Hanley, and he interviews rent boy Donna Juan for a profile in the paper. Stories of the past emerge from the streets, bars and brothels of London, of police corruption, and the elimination of key witnesses, such as that of a ticket tout, whilst in the present a councillor is hit by a car, put in hospital for asking unwanted questions and a rent boy disappears. Hyatt's curiosity and professional calling plunges him into a unfamiliar but dangerous London, but he is out of his depth and lying to his wife, Karen. He becomes part of a motley crew consisting of a lawyer, his black minder, a one-eyed comic, and a geographer rent boy, all fizzing with energy, looking for revenge and a justice which the rest of society failed to secure, unfazed by the obstacles in their path as his editor publishes a front page expose on Mulhall, tipping Hyatt into an abyss of fear as danger creeps ever nearer to those close to him.

Nath's use of language is sublime, in a narrative that more often than not feels like a stream of consciousness, and his priceless depiction of London is vibrant, ribald, and colourful, peopled by a huge cast of terrific characters. The interactions between the characters is done with a style, deftness and skill that I could only admire. Woven into the heart of this edgy and gritty story is a reflection on history, philosophy, religion, literature, politics and homophobia, through its portrayal of the integral characters. Nath examines the nature of race, individual, institutional and societal, the concept of justice, and revenge in this thought provoking and profound picture of a nation and a city. I was particularly delighted in the role of the women, Fabiana and Karen in the vengeance that takes place in this irrepressible, ambitious and exuberant tragi-comic tale. Without a doubt, Michael Nath deserves to win awards for this and I cannot recommend this highly enough! Many thanks to Quercus for an ARC.

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Treatment is set in London circa 2011, but so idiosyncratically framed it'd be easy to believe this was all taking place a few centuries ago, or at some point in the far future. The dialogue-heavy narrative – speckled with flecks of other languages, historical tidbits and obscure references – has all the uproarious colour of a street ballad; the characters, eccentric to a fault, are given to lengthy, verbose speeches that make them sound like neural nets trained on Shakespeare and Martin Amis. It's near-impossible to pin down the baggy story succinctly, but it involves a journalist named Carl Hyatt following the trail of Mulhall, a sinister kingpin.

Initially, I was interested in this because the blurb made it sound a lot like Danny Denton's brilliant The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow. There are some similarities, and certainly Denton's book is the closest comparison I can think of, though The Treatment didn't thrill me in quite the same way. It's Earlie King with a more conventional setting; a present-day, less queer (but not exactly un-queer) Confessions of the Fox; Plume if it was spliced with a 17th-century picaresque.

It's sometimes hampered by an issue that also afflicts Joanna Kavenna's Zed: the sense of a plot-driven story trying to squeeze out from beneath a freewheeling narrative. Its digressive style is stirring, but it can also be exhausting, depending what you're in the mood for – or, indeed, what you want to get out of reading a novel in the first place. And just as with Zed, my final rating of three stars feels like an inappropriate but unavoidable compromise. I was so frustrated with some parts of it (hated almost everything about Carl's relationship with Karen) while loving others (Donna Juan is surely one of the best characters of the year).

I received an advance review copy of The Treatment from the publisher through NetGalley.

TinyLetter

[Liz Barnsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel quite like Michael Nath’s The Treatment- written in a uniquely involving style, peppered with vivid reality through an almost stream of consciousness prose, it is a story of murder and justice failed, a cautionary, authentic tale of our time.

Set in a vibrant, darkly intuitive London, this story of a murdered black teenager, a racist killing that has echoes of Stephen Lawrence – resonates down the years until an eclectic, genuinely engaging and oft edgy group dynamic comes together through an almost Chinese whisper like contemplation of the past crime. At the centre of their focus sits crime lord Mulhall, a darkly enigmatic and hugely compelling character who holds power over the streets and the hearts and minds of the populace.

The Treatment is a novel you inhale, the central heart of it sits within that place where certain acts of violence get absorbed into the subconscious of a nation. As such it is a hugely realistic tale viewed through a glass darkly, one that will stay with you long after you turn the final page.

Highly Recommended for fans of literary magic tricks. One of the most intelligent novels I’ve read for a while.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr Nath is another author who's other work I shall have to seek out.

[Greville Waterman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just do not know where to start. I have reviewed nearly 350 books on NetGalley and this is the first one where I really do not know what to say.

It is exuberant and paints wonderful verbal pictures beautifully expressed but I honestly found it almost unreadable. A long stream of consciousness which seemed to jump from place to place and character to character.

I tried, Oh I tried. I struggled with the opening five chapters and was totally unable to describe what I had read, who was who, who was doing what to who and what exactly was happening. So I started it again and felt exactly the same. Maybe I just could not summon up the patience or even concentration but I really just could not "get" this. I can well understand why David Peace apparently loves this book as there is a similar stream of consciousness in this work as there is in his.

It just wasn't for me but maybe it is my problem and I have just damned with faint praise what might be a massive best seller.

I am going to leave this one alone now and try it again after Christmas and see if my viewpoint or ability to assimilate, comprehend and enjoy it has changed.

[Alma (retirement at last) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn’t like the writing style at all or any of the characters.
It just didn’t do anything for me.

[Marc Nash · Rating 3 out of 5]

Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFd1M...

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best books of 2020, the ones we'll still be reading a thousand years from now, include:
#3, The Treatment, Michael Nath Britain
An interrogation of hate crime, vigilante justice, and the use of social force based on an infamous murder case, Michael Nath’s The Treatment is a Dante-esque descent into the London criminal underworld filled with bizarre and magnificent misfits, which reimagines and combines elements of Hamlet and The Brothers Karamazov.
In many ways it compares with William T. Vollman’s lurid and transgressive underworld quest in The Royal Family; in others with his sources and references in Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, de Sade, and Jean Genet, as well as classic film noir.
The narrative frame is the hunt for an organization of racist murderers with police protection by an anti-fascist direct action team who must operate in a world where the powerless and the dispossessed, the marginalized and the erased have no other champions, where dehumanized others are subjugated by elites through authorized force and control and white supremacist terror, and all agency and power is not granted but seized. This is my world, and Michael Nath has described it brilliantly.
I believe the enigma of power and the social use of force to be the central issue of our civilization, politics, and of all human relationships; and The Treatment interrogates this interconnected web of issues and set of puzzle boxes with great vision and originality.
In invented and borrowed language referential to that of Anthony Burgess and James Joyce, beautiful and inspiring by itself, Michael Nath offers us an anti-fascist novel and manifesto of liberation which illuminates the great struggle of our time and its central issue of power and force.

[Michael Butler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am sorry, but I could not cope with this book. I read for pleasure and this was hard work. Was intrigued by subject matter, which was why I picked it. It had moments where I felt the narrative was going somewhere, then lost again. I guess you can’t love everything you read. Did not finish. I can’t really rate it fairly. Which is why giving it 2.

[James Sale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Michael Nath seems to be a novelist who has it all - all that pertains to being a novelist, that is, bar fame and fortune. Why, here be great plots, fascinating characters, exciting themes, and an exuberance of language like ... like who? ... Well, maybe like Ben Jonson in Bartholomew Fair; for as he writes at one point: ‘This great house of concern still teemed with people: medics, muffin-men, volunteers, traders. It was also a kind of fair.’ A kind of fair, like Bartholomew: in London, a place of ribaldry and coney-catchers, bullies and slumming gallants; and perhaps like Jonson, with a distinct moral ambiguity. Again, as Nath writes: ‘Names change, killers fly back to regimental nests, retire with the Military Cross, buy farms in Australia, become mercenaries, security consultants, Waitrose Managers, PE teachers, Prosecutions: zero.’

Truly, we have a major novelist here: the cornucopia of language (like Jonson), a fluent demotic based on a fully multicultural London, and the ability to make it all come alive. But The Treatment is much harder-edged than Bartholomew Fair, harder even than Volpone; for here we have real life-and-death criminality. Based – though it’s never said – loosely on the Stephen Lawrence murder of twenty years or so ago (hence: prosecutions zero), Nath explores corruption, deep crime and racism at its basest level. Hardly, you would have thought, matter for much laughter, but Nath’s writing is a match for it: this is no dour, depressing Scandi-drama, but a satire of savage and hilarious intent. As he says (of one of his characters): ‘His satires is bangin'!’

The story is told in the first person by the highly imperfect journalist Carl Hyatt; but as a journalist he is, of course, a quasi-detective, and amidst all the demotic he has this Chandler-esque ability to describe situations in genius brush-strokes. Let me share some of my favourites:

‘She looked ready for anything, except work.’

‘Dark world, dark decisions.’

‘The pale lady smiled as if happiness were dangerous.’

‘And so many of them are like this - fare-Dodgers, shoplifters, robbers, thugs: they've got severe reality issues, see no further than what they want.’

‘The idea may have been stupid, but stupid ideas aren't less persuasive than good ones, from racism to sub-prime mortgages.’

‘Marriage was a kind of field-trip.’

‘The investigation was undertaken with formidable negative energy.’

‘... How often on the Saturn rings about the heart have you not wished death?’

‘I had to buzz from the street so I said was Tara Palmer-Tomkinson and they let me up from curiosity.’

‘Ah, is there anywhere a cure for disappointment?’

‘It's a way of raising the desire he feels for her, into something fine; so he campaigns for his community instead of her love-box.’

‘... Darkness is the diametric opposite of journalism.... Because jour means day...'

‘Whereas hatred and revenge-desire wear out the heart that harbours them like broken-glass in a paper bag.’

Aren’t all these - and there are so many more - just brilliant observations and quotes? But the plot too, propels one forward with relentless force. My favourite chapter is chapter 30: in The White Cross pub where enemies meet and the tension crackles – I simply couldn’t put it down, a sort of London gangster equivalent to watching Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales enter the bar where the bounty hunters are! You can’t take your eye off the page.

This book is a masterpiece and I do not know why Nath is not a household name or Booker prize winner. Who is writing better than this in crime fiction? No-one I know.

If I had to be critical, and not too hagiographical, perhaps the demotic is in a small number of places almost too dense; and I think I found the ending mildly awkward. But these would be – to use Dr Johnson’s terminology – the petty cavils of a petty mind, given the splendour of this ‘bangin’ tale.

I strongly recommend that Guy Ritchie read this book, for he alone perhaps could make a masterpiece in film of it; indeed, the masterpiece of his own career, as he has made some very fine ‘London’ films along the way! Get reading Guy – this is for you – and perhaps only then will Michael Nath get the credit he deserves for this outstanding story.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eldine Matthews, a black teenager, is stabbed to death at a bus stop by a racist gang. Twenty years later, his killers appear to be above the law and beyond prosecution. But the crime is not forgotten, certainly not by a cynical former reporter, Carl Hyatt, and a cast of oddballs who all coalesce around a desire to see justice.

This is a novel that is firmly inspired by true events. The Eldine Matthews murder is obviously inspired by that of Stephen Lawrence, the perpetrators and their ability to thumb their noses at the judicial system, inspired by the killers of Stephen. The plot also mirrors true events and the author has clearly done his research. In the novel, police corruption, gangsterism, and the killer’s relationship with organised crime figures who are able to bribe police, plays a large part in their ability to evade being called to account. There is much evidence that this is how Stephen’s killers were able to usurp the system.

As someone with a huge interest in the Stephen Lawrence case, police corruption and organised crime, and someone who’s extensively read around the subject of the Lawrence murder and the corruption that plagued London’s Metropolitan Police in the 1990’s, I really wanted to enjoy this book. But I’m afraid that for all The Treatment’s brilliance - and there is brilliance here, beautiful writing, intriguing characterisation - this novel is just a little too rambling. Personally, I felt that there were a few too many digressions and the plot needed to be a little tighter.

As I say, this is a book that I really wanted to love. I really enjoy novels like this - James Elroy’s reimagining of the Kennedy Assassination in his American Underworld trilogy, David Peace’s books on the Yorkshire Ripper & Miner’s strike (and a quote from Peace praising the novel appears on the front cover) - books that look back at an important and controversial event and through the prism of fiction reveal the dirty truths, the corruption, the venality, and the injustice. This book does all of that, but my personal thoughts are that it would have been more effective if it had been a bit more focused.

[Ben Summers-McKay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thrilling third novel from a writer we’ll be seeing more of!

The Treatment is the third fantastic novel by Michael Nath. Nath is a writer you may not have heard of, but you’re surely going to more of in the years to come!

His first novel¸ La Rochelle (2010, Route), was an excellent thriller-cum-crime-cum pissed-up literary romp through London. British Story, A Romance (2014, Route) was similarly brilliant – just as booze-fuelled, just as funny, just as clever.

The Treatment, out by Riverrun in March 2020, takes something excellent to a new level. 447 pages in hardback but paced like the best crime or thriller, you’ll whiz through, dragged by the scruff of your attention and emerge from its caves battered and bruised and eager for another go, not unlike narrator Hyatt at the end of his first Krav Maga session.

This is a dark tale of race-hate and violent crime, a novel about thugs on the edge of decline and would-be heroes on the verge of revenge if only they could summon the guts and silence their conscience.

Michael Nath asks us who we are and what we’ll stand for. And his manner is decidedly not ‘self-help’, knowing we may not be that happy with the answer! Are you strong enough for what you’re after? he asks us now, echoing similar questions from the earlier books. (It’s revenge here, fulfilment in British Story, and sex or maybe even love in La Rochelle.) Maybe you hope to answer yes, feeling it’s expected and wondering ‘by whom?’ Nath’s genius is in making you check yourself first, so you take a breath before the plunge.

Give it a go; the real answer might surprise you.

[Annarella · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is totally out of my comfort zone but I loved every moment even when it was like being punched in the face.
The style of writing is amazing, I loved how the writer uses words and how tells a dark and fascinating story.
The setting and the cast of characters are amazing and I won't forget them soon.
It was a great read, highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

[jengagonewrong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-
It was *fun* to read. I got confused a lot about who-was-who so I'm glad for the character list at the front of the book. I'm not sure I really got it all the way, or agreed with it all the way, but it was written in a really unique and entertaining style.

[Michael Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyable- flawed but fab. Makes you work for it but worth the chase

[Tina · Rating 1 out of 5]

No.

[Auke]

DNF @ 100 pages

[Steven Lewis]

Could not get on with it.