Better known as a sports journalist and a biographer skilled at teasing out the innermost thoughts from the likes of Tony Adams and Steve Claridge, Ian Ridley has now proved that he deserves to be taken seriously as a thriller writer.

This is a wellplotted and exciting novel that looks behind the rationale for a London based terrorist atrocity.

Ridley is an expert observer of the multicultural tensions of the inner city and the book reeks of authenticity.

Highly recommended.

The Outer Circle is set over the course of five days, shortly after the end of the London 2012 Olympics. The story is set on the other side of the city in the very affluent area of Regents Park and Primrose Hill. A man walks into the Regents Park Mosque with a flamethrower...

We follow the event and the aftermath through the eyes of five different characters:

Saul - an older man who walks through Regents Park to get his daily treatment for prostate cancer
Rashid - who works in the bookshop at the Mosque, a recent convert to Islam
Deena - a black police officer
Tom - a student
Jan - a journalist

The narrative is broken into sections that drop in and out of the characters' lives, all trying to unpick what has happened. At times the characters can seem a bit cliched, and the dialogue can sound pretty clunky at times, but the story is compelling enough to capture the reader. The book's real strength is the sense of place. Regents Park is a pretty small area, even though, as we're told more than once, it takes a while to walk the length of the park. It is an area with cafes and bars, bandstands and bunkers. It has a high footfall from tourists, locals, dog-walkers, homeless... The park is almost a place apart from the rest of the city; the roads through it are closed at night and feel like secret roads; there are lawns and trees and bushes instead of the buildings and CCTV cameras; the park has its own rules and those who use the park feel temporarily relieved from the rules of the rest of the city.

But as well as adhering to the strict geography of the park, there is also a sense of multi-cultural London. It has been in broadcast into every home around the world through the Olympics, it has folk of all colours and creeds. The cultural diversity is great enough that, for the most part, people can walk around unnoticed in a busy and somewhat impersonal city. We step into the world of politics and prejudice - with a firmly left of centre editorial policy applied sometimes with a heavyish hand.

The novel is pacy and the pages seem to turn themselves. All five characters have their individual quests and part of the fun is seeing how they interlink. This is a light, entertaining read that sometimes promises to provoke thoughts and sometimes succeeds in doing so. This would be worth taking to the beach on holiday to deliver a taste of home.

It was a interesting mystery novel that had me guessing till the end about everything .