Paper Cage by Tom Baragwanath

A grim and gritty novel, bristling with menace, stuffed to the brim with characters it's difficult to like--mainly because they mostly don't seem to like themselves, especially the POV. It's a crime novel, and there are dead bodies, but the central crime is not murder (which seems kinda rare). Not a particularly graceful novel, in prose or story or character, but that may be a cultural difference; it absolutely stinks of lived experience. Just about everyone in the novel is a racist, it's a shock the wannabe White Savior is the worst.