‘Tourniquet’, Kim Lakin-Smith’s debut novel, is an ambitious book. It is set in Renegade City, the rebranded-gothic British city once known as Nottingham. At some point in the city’s recent past the rock band Origin claimed it as a safe haven for “the sub-cultures of the world”; more honestly, though, Renegade City is for the self-identified gothic and industrial outsiders of the world.
Skip forward some years and Renegade City has become occupied by four distinct tribes. There are also the Drifters, a catch-all collective term for the disparate individuals who have chosen to make Renegade their home, and the Skinwalkers, a violent and tightly-knit biker clan united by their harsh camaraderie but denied recognition as a formal tribe. Meanwhile, the four members of Origin have become the Drathcor – essentially mysterious, vampiric figures leading aloof and secretive lives – and several of them rule the city alongside the tribe-elected members of the Management. An additional group, the Grallators, are responsible for maintaining some semblance of law and order in the city.
At the outset of the novel two plot strands are teased to the fore. Roses, the messianic frontman of Origin, is dead, killed in what may have been an act of arson or murder. Origin’s onetime drummer, Druid, is dispatched by Sophia – once the band’s bassist, now an objection of his desire and resentment – to investigate the truth of what transpired. For the first time in many years, Druid is forced out of himself and down into the streets of the city.