#Merky Books bags Reid’s ‘deeply moving’ account of life in inner-city Britain

#Merky Books has bagged Trap Life, a “gripping and intimate” account of life in the inner city from criminologist Dr Ebony Reid. 

Senior commissioning editor Lemara Lindsay-Prince acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, including audio, from Sophie Lambert at C&W on an exclusive submission. The book will be published in 2024. 

“This is a book that demands to be read,” said Lambert. “Ebony’s personal knowledge and professional insight are effortlessly fused together to offer up a compelling and deeply moving narrative that will challenge preconceptions and provide a much-needed fresh perspective on life in urban Britain.” 

The publisher said Trap life is a timely investigation into the devastating socioeconomic disparity in the UK. Reid combines her academic research, personal experience alongside “extraordinary-ordinary” stories to go “beyond the headlines and the sensationalist reporting of crime and violence to reveal the heartbeat and humanity of a misrepresented community”. The reader is introduced to the residents of Northville as Reid shows a neighbourhood filled with friendship and “not only the catalyst and consequences of criminality and violence”. 

Reid commented: “I am hugely grateful to #Merky Books for giving me the platform to fulfil my childhood dream to tell first-hand unadulterated accounts of life within the confines of the inner city. This book goes beyond the standard gangland narrative and asks those men existing on London’s socioeconomic periphery about the larger context of their lives. This book shatters the myths and misconceptions society clings to regarding urban men and their alleged propensity for gang violence and, hopefully offers a new way of seeing and talking about street violence. I dedicate this book to all the mandem immersed in trap life, whose material and internal battles have been silenced for too long and who have been troubled by stories that they cannot tell.” 

Lindsay-Prince added: “This is a journey, not a safari through a community we are all a stone’s throw away from at any point in time, or any city across the country. These are unseen sites, and unheard stories from within sacred and contested spaces. An honourable account of very real lives existing against systems of inequity and powered by hope.”