It reads, with hindsight, uncannily like a prophecy. Long before Suella Braverman became home secretary, when Mark Rowley was enjoying a brief career sabbatical ahead of being appointed chief commissioner of the Metropolitan police, he published an unexpected literary debut. A strictly fictional thriller, co-authored by the journalist David Derbyshire, The Sleep of Reason is set in a world where shrill competing political ideologies make the job of policing infinitely harder and real people consequently risk getting hurt.
“Between you and me, I despair with this generation of politicians,” says a senior police officer at one point. “We’ve got the rise of extreme-right terrorism, the continued threat from Islamists and we’re in the middle, supposedly protecting the public. And meanwhile the political class on every side seems more interested in chucking fuel on the fire.”
