Customer Reviews
Opportunity Missed - By: Daniel Bishop, 24 Sep 2008 
This could have been a dazzling, grab-readers by the throat & force mainstream society to face hard realities to bring about real change, sort of a book. Heale has done all the hard - & often very dangerous - work; painstaking, on the street researchin extremely tough areas, interviews with police, politicians & community leaders, & exhaustive background reading.
Unfortunately, Heale is incapable of wearing this research lightly. Instead of making his points through powerful examples with a deft commentary to tease out the ideas & conclusions, he likes to tell, tell, tell himself. The result is a book with far too much tedious, often unfocused, theorising. Heale's claim that it is 'writtenin the style of a novel' is laughable. Three quarters of it clunks along as if it was produced by a graduate student completing an MA on Gang Culturein Modern British Teenagers, packed with plodding academic phrases like: 'To understand why, one must' , 'As we've already established', 'It is worth dwelling...','This leads us to the issue of ...' etc etc.
There are a few moments where Heale shines. The start of chapter three when he describes a South London gang member gearing himself up for a killing is startling. Sadly, it is all too short.
This is still a book worth reading, & its ultimate conclusion about the chaos that underpins gang culture is undoubtedly true & important. But, alas, One Blood falls well short of the truly society changing work it had the potential to be.
Outstanding - a very important book - By: D. Lloyd, 09 Sep 2008 
This is the first modern commentary I've read on gangs & gang culture which refuses to slip into the hand-wringing clichés of race, absentee fathers or video game violence. What Heale presents us instead is a balanced - & brilliant - presentation of the psychological, societal & economic factors which contribute to a young person's entry into this much-misunderstood culture.
Most of the research presented is based on face-to-face interviews, & what comes across most clearly is the variety of people who existin these criminal micro-societies; from the intelligent, eloquent "faces" (bosses) to the ambitious, bright kids, Heale constantly undermines the lazy prejudices which lead us to imagine all gang members as angry, uneducated children (although many are).
Heale carries us along at quite a pace, but also emphasizes the telling detail; details which while undeniably shocking, never slip into glamourisation of the subject matter. Allin all, this book presents a significant step forwardin the general debate on gangs - what they are & what, if anything, we can do about them. I would recommend it to any person seeking to understand more about Britain's gang culture.
Gripping read and insightful analysis - By: Marcus Littlejohns, 29 Aug 2008 This is a fantastically well-written insightin to Britain's gangs. Heale has conducted some fascinating (and frankly extremely brave) interviews with those figures at the heart of gang culture. This could have been written simply as a chapter-by-chapter account of these interviews, but Heale's novelistic style makes this a truly gripping, & at times traumatic, read. One Blood could also have sensationalised Britain's gangs, but it provides a very real, intelligent & mature account of gang life & an intriguing analysis of the problems associated with it. Indeed, it is often the casual & arbitrary nature of violencein this chaotic world that will shock the reader most of all.
Having finished the book, your perceptions of gang culture & the solutions to its problems will be turned on their head. Society appears to be misinterpreting the very nature of 'gangs' & until we understand that it is often the chaos, rather than order, of gang life that is feeding violence, the situation can only get worse. Heale has the courage to offer solutions but I suspect that his greatest contribution will be to bring greater awareness & understanding of this anarchic world.
Heale is a very talented writer & as a work of non-fiction alone this would have been a staggeringly good read. That it is non-fiction makes One Blood an extremely important book on a subject that has become one of the biggest issuesin Britain today.
