Police Procedural

THE WIT AND WISDOM OF BERNIE GUNTHER

Over the thirty years and fourteen books of the series, Philip Kerr’s wonderful antihero Bernie Gunther was never afraid to speak his mind, both to us as readers, and often to the real-life characters – as diverse as Reinhardt Heydrich, William Somerset Maugham and Eva Peron – who peopled the stories. Sometimes he could be profound, sometimes savagely funny, but always observant. Here is a selection of his best lines.

Most of us who love great novels were aware that Philip Kerr was ill, and it was a moment of great sadness when we learned of his death in March 2018. We could not grieve in the full sense of the word. That was for his family. But we could only dream of what other adventures PK could have dreamed up for his magnificent creation, had he been granted more years. As it was, Metropolis – ironically, the book featuring Bernie at his youngest – was published posthumously. The Gunther books will be read as long as people have the desire to learn about 20thC history and the people who – for good or ill – shaped it. Also, as long as there are readers who enjoy a well-turned insult and a melancholy gaze into the human soul, Bernie Gunther will live for ever.

August 18, 2023 0

THE MISPER . . . Between the covers

Central to this powerful novel is one of the great social scourges of modern Britain – the County Lines illegal drug distribution structure. It is horribly simple. The big drug barons, most probably masquerading as genuine businessmen, use a complex hierarchy to deliver the product – weed, crack, whatever is in vogue – to their customers. The criminal equivalent of the cheerful Eastern European Amazon man who delivers your parcel on time is, typically, a teenage boy, perhaps still of school age (but he rarely attends) possessed of nothing more sinister than a bicycle, a hooded sweat shirt and a bandana to cover his lower face. The youngsters have a huge advantage over the police, glued as they are these days to the seats of their patrol cars. These lads can pedal down one-way streets, navigate the narrowest town alleys and passageways, be here one moment and gone the next. Their immediate bosses provide them with cheap burner ‘phones, which are as expendable as the people carrying them.

On this depressing armature Kate London sculpts her story. Ryan Kennedy is a teenager hooked into one of these criminal gangs, and one of his handlers has given him a handgun. When he is cornered in a Metropolitan Police operation, he shoots dead Detective Inspector Kieron Shaw, who was trying to persuade him to throw away the weapon. When Ryan is tried for murder, clever lawyers manage to hoodwink the jury, and he is given a relatively lenient jail sentence. Once inside, of course, he is lauded by fellow inmates as someone who “killed a Fed”, and the big wheels in his organisation make sure his prison term is comfortable.

Kate London then introduces the other people whose lives are radically changed by Shaw’s murder. There is DC Lizzie Griffiths who has had an affair with Shaw and now looks after Connor, the result of that liason. DC Steve Bradshaw was the undercover cop who became close to Ryan Kennedy and, in one way, created the fatal showdown. Detective Sarah Collins was deeply involved in the case, but has now been transferred to another force in the north.

Ryan Kennedy may be many things, but he is not stupid, and he pulls the wool over the eyes of his probation officer and is relocated to the country town of Middleton and given a job in a bike shop. He wastes no time in resurrecting his criminal career and is soon known as NK (apparently a Game of Thrones character) and continues to exert his malign influence.

The “misper” of the title is a fifteen year-old called Lief, who has fallen into the clutches of one of the gangs. He goes missing, and his mother – Asha – eventually alerts the police. The police tie in Lief’s disappearance with the re-emergence of Ryan Kennedy as local boss of drugs distribution in Middleton. No spoilers from me, but what happens next is a tense and vivid narrative that is crying out for a screenplay.

On one level, Kate London has written an an intense and gripping police procedural thriller, but she also poses many questions. Perhaps it is unfair to expect that novelists should provide us with answers to real-life social problems, but the questions still need to be asked. Readers of this novel can infer what they like but, for what it’s worth, my conclusions are: (1) One of the greatest calamities to befall British society is the absence of traditional fathers in the bringing up of male children in certain communities. Ryan Kennedy has no father. Lief has no father. A cynic might say that Connor has no father, because he was shot dead by a criminal drug runner. (2) The British police are being overwhelmed by a tide of budget cuts, aggressive criminal defence lawyers, strident social justice warriors and a cataclysm of civil liberties activists.

Kate London is a former police officer and has written a grimly convincing story of a part of British society that is broken, and a criminal justice system barely fit for purpose. The Misper is published by Corvus and is available now.

August 14, 2023 1

DIG TW0 GRAVES . . . Between the covers

I thoroughly enjoyed an earlier book in the series, and you can click the image below for the link.

I mention this, because Dig Two Graves begins literally as the final scene of The Temenos Remains fades out. We are in Norfolk and crime fiction buffs will know that this is no rural idyll; readers of Jim Kelly’s Peter Shaw series – and the excellent Ruth Galloway novels by Elly Griffiths – will be well aware that away from the “Chelsea-On-Sea” second homes of North Norfolk and the gentle downlands beyond Sandringham, Norwich and Great Yarmouth provide, to adapt the immortal words of Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi, as wretched a hive of scum and villainy as one could wish to experience.

The “scum and villainy” in this case are provided by the brutal Lithuanian gangsters Constantin Gabrys and his psychopathic son Mica. As a local, Heather Peck will be only too cogniscant of the fact that Freedom of Movement in the dark days of EU membership brought tens of thousands of Eastern Europeans to the area to pick and process the food crops on which we all rely; like many others, she will also know that with the decent folk came gangsters, drug barons and people-traffickers, and this is the background to this novel.

DCI Greg Geldard and his team have found a Romanian woman – Madame Trieste, real name Adrianne Laurientiu – brutally murdered. The killers, in no particular order, have crucified the nail-bar owner, cut her throat, and made her swallow her own eyeballs The first police officer on the scene, DI Sarah Laurence has been abducted by the killers. The search for Sarah Laurence and the determination to bring her captors to justice drives the police on, and provides us with an excellent read.

I finished this excellent novel in just two sessions, and that should tell you that it is a genuine page-turner. My rather weather-beaten maxim for judging crime novels is in the shape of a question – do we care about the principal characters in the novel? Here, I can deliver a resounding ‘Yes!”. Geldard is thoroughly human and believable, and it doesn’t hurt that he his “significant other” is colleague DS Chris Matthews. Heather Peck doesn’t make a meal of this relationship, but she makes us aware that the police top brass are not entirely in favour. Peck resolves the problem, rather delightfully, in the last few paragraphs.

Dig Two Graves is a superior police procedural that rattles on at a breathtaking pace, and features genuinely vile criminals pursued by well-observed and authentic coppers. It was published by Ormesby Publishing on 28th June.

August 1, 2023 1

AND THEN I’LL KNOW . . . Between the covers

This novel is, on one level, an entertaining and robust police procedural. On another level, however, it is a study in obsession, and something of an object lesson about what happens when, metaphorically speaking, people lift heavy stones and are surprised at what they see scurrying around underneath. Amber Ryan is a detective sergeant with the Manchester police. The greater part of the book has a then and now narrative. ‘Then’ describes, Amber’s childhood which turns out to have many a tragic twist. Her father, a policeman, goes missing. Then, her mother dies of cancer. She and her sister Rachel are taken in by their aunt and uncle but when her uncle is killed in a road accident and her aunt goes to pieces emotionally and physically, the two girls are taken into local authority care.

Back in ‘Now’, Amber’s obsession is to find out what actually happened to her father. On the pretext that a local murder of a young woman is connected to similar murders in London, she requests permission to go to the capital and look at the files. In truth, however, she is more interested in the fact that the women killed in London all had connections to a children’s home and cases of child abuse. She knows that her father was involved in investigating this case and is convinced that she will turn up evidence which will lead her to the truth of what happened to him.

With a mixture of good fortune, instinct and background knowledge, Amber is able to refocus the investigating team on the murder of the young women. As a result she is then seconded for a further two weeks and comes something of a blue eyed girl in the eyes of the senior officers. This is not to the satisfaction of everyone in the team. Temporarily promoted to Detective Inspector, it has to be said that she pushes her luck she interviews some of the men who were found guilty of historic child abuse crimes. The interviews are not particularly friendly or gentle, and she moves from one appointment to the next hoping to stay ahead of phone calls of complaint to Professional Standards. Amber also suspects that there is someone on the investigating team who is leaking information to the very people they are trying to track. But who?

Two thirds of the way through the book it turns into anything but a police procedural as Amber breaks every rule in the book in her determination to find the truth. This final section of the book,where Amber goes very much off piste, may not be to everyone’s taste and it has to be said some of it does stretch credulity. There is certainly something of a “with one bound she was free”element to what goes on. Amber’s heroics result in the bad guys being brought down, but it does not bring the outcome that she was looking for. She is almost drowned by a tidal wave of betrayal, shattered childhood dreams and a bitter sense of betrayal. It could be said, though, that at the very end Amber does gaze into the abyss but sensibly turns away before the abyss gazes back at her. She is left with another personal challenge, another search and possibly a deeper sense that this final quest will bring her personal happiness.

And Then I’ll Know is certainly a gripping read (I finished it in two or three sessions) and is clearly a departure from Brady’s previous two novels – comedy thrillers on the theme of food. The Meal of Fortune and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Chef may not have caused much of a stir in the world of crime fiction, but this latest book deserves to be read and admired by a wider audience. And Then I’ll Know is published by 5W Press and is available now.

https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/and-then-i-ll-know

July 9, 2023 1

TO DIE IN JUNE . . . Between the covers

Alan Parks (left) introduced us to Glasgow cop Harry McCoy in 2018 with Bloody January, and he has been resolutely working through the months with succeeding novels. Fictional Detective Inspectors in British crime fiction are many and varied. You would certainly need a fair sized village hall to seat them comfortably were they all to meet, so what about Harry McCoy? He has a fairly dark back-story. He was in and out of care institutions as a child. His mother is long dead, and his father – never the most consistent of parents – has now abandoned any sense of normality and is a homeless alcoholic. Through childhood connections – both were in care – he is connected to underworld boss Stevie Cooper. While not exactly in his pay, McCoy owes his old friend big-time, due to incidents in their shared past.

We are in the summer of 1975 so, in one sense this a historical novel, with many little period features that the author has to get right. No internet, computers or mobile phones, obviously, but early on in the story Parks sets the scene beautifully. McCoy has a celebrity girlfriend – a famous actress – and they are together at an showbiz awards function in the company of a young Billy Connolly, Stanley Baxter, Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie (Google her) and Hamish Imlach. For those not versed in Scottish entertainers, Parks has Michael Aspel overseeing the evening.

McCoy has been transferred from his usual base to the insalubrious district of Possil, an area renowned for crime and deprivation. There is a purpose behind the move. McCoy’s boss, Chief Inspector Murray, believes that a group of detectives at the Possil station are corrupt, and he wants McCoy to infiltrate the cabal. Before McCoy can get close to the bent coppers, two urgent cases demand his attention. First, a vagrant is found dead, foaming at the mouth from having imbibed some kind of toxic drink. McCoy attends the scene, praying that the victim is not his dad. It isn’t, but the blasé dismissal of the case by the ‘experts’ as “just another alkie drank himself into an early grave” annoys him, and he senses something more sinister.

Then, a distraught woman presents herself at the station telling him that her young son has been abducted. Understandably, McCoy takes the woman at her word, and hits the panic button, with ensuing door-to-door, enquiries, blue lights flashing everywhere, and all leave cancelled. The woman then has some kind of fit and is hospitalised. When McCoy visits the home, and talks to the woman’s husband, the Reverend West, he is told that there is no son – never was – and that his wife has been suffering with sever mental health issues for some years. West is the pastor at an obscure fundamentalist church, The Church of Christ’s Suffering.

When Mrs West throws herself to her death from a bridge, and more homeless men are found dead, McCoy hardly knows which way to turn. Added into the mix of his misery is that his old chum Stevie Cooper is about to initiate a turf war with a rival gangster, and expects McCoy to play his part. The plot twists this way and that, and there is a final hairpin bend which runs off the road anyone who is hoping for a warm and comfortable outcome to to this case for Harry McCoy.

lan Parks has created a complex and totally credible character in Harry McCoy. His every waking hour is buffeted by conflicts with his past, collisions with his present and justifiable trepidation about what is yet to come. To Die In June was published by Canongate on 25th May.

June 5, 2023 1

FLESH AND BLOOD . . . Between the covers

This is book number eleven in the series, so a quick heads-up for new readers.
Time: the present
Place: Humberside
Main characters: Detective Inspector (recently promoted from DS) Aector McAvoy. He is a Scot, huge and bear-like, a gentle soul but a formidable copper. His wife Roisin; she is of Irish Gypsy stock, romantic but fiercely protective of Aector and their children – Fin and Lilah. Detective Superintendent Patricia ‘Trish’ Pharoah, thirty years in the force, and as tough as nails. Trish and Aector worship each other, but it is a purely platonic relationship. McAvoy is on holiday with his family in the Lake District, living in a traditional Romany Vardo.

In this book: Reuben Hollow, a serial killer, serving several life sentences for murdering people he judged as having escaped justice. He was captured by McAvoy. Detective Chief Superintendent George Earl. Promoted because Trish Pharoah turned down the job. Earl is the very model of a modern media friendly senior police officer:

Trish is not immune to the pleasures of the flesh, and she is in bed with an Icelandic copper she met on a course. Their post coital bliss is disturbed by Trish’s car alarm going off, and Thor Ingolfsson runs downstairs to investigate. He is attacked with an adze and left for dead. Thor happens to be a dead ringer for Aector, and when the local police arrive to find the man face down in the road, they put two and two together, and make seventeen. Aector is very much alive and well, however and, despite being told to stay well away by Earl, he is determined to find out what is going on. David Mark’s description of Earl will ring horribly true to anyone who has experienced senior management in corporate services in recent years:

“George Earl is a tall, slim, straight-backed careerist who exudes the gentle earnestness and Anglican-priest sincerity of a Tony Blair. He has a habit of clasping his hands together when he talks, and makes a great show of telling his staff that his door is always open, and there’s no such thing as a stupid question.”

David Mark spent years as a crime reporter for a regional newspaper, and so he is well aware of the depths of villainy which are regularly plumbed by apparently ordinary and innocuous men and women. He also knows that – despite graduate entry – some of the people who are accepted as police officers are not “the brightest and best of the sons of the morning.” (Activists – please feel free to substitute the gender of your choice)

“The three uniformed constables milling around at the rear….he’s noticed that none of them seem to be able to breathe through their nose. All in their twenties and look as though they would be more comfortable working in a phone shop or flogging gloriously chavtastic trainers in a sports shop.”

What follows is pure mayhem. A former police colleague of Trish Pharoah meets an elaborate death by wood-carving chisels, McAvoy narrowly escapes death by hanging, in an execution house probably last used by Albert Pierrepoint, the chaos of Trish Pharoah’s previous life is laid bare to the world, and our man emerges – not unscathed – but able to fight another day.

Flesh and Blood veers violently between the darkest noir imaginable and a simple – but affecting – poetry. It is published by Severn House and will be available on 6th June. The final sentence sums up this brilliant series:

“And inside McAvoy’s head, another voice joins the chorus of the dead.”

https://fullybooked2017.com/tag/david-mark/

May 31, 2023 0

KILLING THE INVISIBLE . . . Between the covers

Keith Dixon’s Porthaven is a fictional town on England’s south coast. It doesn’t seem woke or disfunctional enough to be Brighton, maybe neither big nor rough enough to be Portsmouth or Southampton, so it’s maybe a mix of all three, seasoned with a dash of Newhaven and Peacehaven. Inspector Walter Watts is a Porthaven copper. He is middle-aged, deeply cynical, overweight, and a man certainly not at ease with himself – or many others – but a very good policeman. When a young woman, later identified as Cheryl Harris, is found murdered on a piece of waste ground, the only thing Watts accomplishes on his visit to the scene is that his sarcastic exchanges with a female CSI officer result in in an official complaint, and him being moved off the case. From the sidelines, Watts knows that whoever killed the young woman was definitely trying to pass on a message. The woman’s face has been obliterated by a concrete slab, with her mobile ‘phone jammed into what was left of her mouth.

His new job is to liaise with Porthaven council over the security aspects for a proposed housing development. This is where Keith Dixon throws in the first of several delightful plot devices. Superintendent Tony ‘Frog’ French is Watts’ boss and the man who gave the order for the sideways move. Watts happens to be having an affair with Frog’s wife Felicity – and guess who is the council executive in charge of the building project? None other than Felicity (using her maiden name) Gable.

When the officer brought in to head up the murder enquiry is himself sidelined (due to some clever calling-in of old favours by Watts) our man is back in business. He senses that the murder of Cheryl Harris is somehow connected to the business dealings of Kurt Swanpool, a millionaire property developer (with a criminal record) who is working with Porthaven Council on the housing development with which Watts was – briefly – involved.

Watts was brought up by his father – and in boarding schools – after his mother left the home. There has been no contact with her from that day to this, until he receives a message from the desk sergeant at Porthaven ‘nick’ simply saying that his mother had ‘phoned, and would he call her back on the number provided. This thread provides an interesting and complex counterpoint to the police investigation into the killing of Cheryl Harris. It also allows Keith Dixon (right) to better define Watts as a person; on the one hand he is aloof, selfish, socially abrasive and enjoys showing his mental superiority; on the other, he is vulnerable, unsure, and shaped by a childhood lacking conventional affection.

Kurt Swanpool may be modeled on a real life notorious Sussex millionaire landlord and part-time criminal with connections to southern Africa. Who knows? Swanpool retains dirty connections, even as he tries to establish his philanthropic credentials. Did anyone – or anything – decent ever come out of the Balkans? The jury is out, and two villains name Milo and Drago appear in the story, and don’t advance the cause of Serbia or Montenegro being nominated for an international human rights award one little bit.

Watts gets his murderer. That’s not me being intentionally oblique, but a rather gentle suggestion that you read a famous 1911 poem by Rudyard Kipling, which begins:

“When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside. “

Killing The Invisible – the second in the Porthaven Trilogy – is superior crime fiction. By turn intense, dark, literate and sardonic, it is published by Spellbound Books, and is available now.

April 27, 2023 1

THE MONK . . . Between the covers

The idea of an investigating detective having what some people see as a disability is an interesting one. Jeffrey Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme is a tetraplegic who, effectively, cannot do ‘normal detective things’; Nero Wolfe is morbidly obese and rarely leaves his apartment – his cases are solved by his brain power and Archie Goodwin‘s leg-work; more recently, Harry Bingham’s Fiona Griffiths suffers from Cotard’s Delusion, aka Walking Corpse Syndrome, which gives her telling insights into murder investigations. Tim Sullivan introduced us to Detective Sergeant George Cross in The Dentist (2021). Cross has Asperger’s Syndrome* I will say now that this was one of those rare book that I simply didn’t want to end. I noted the advance of my bookmark through the pages with definite sadness.

*Symptoms include an inability to understand figurative speech, obsession with detail, difficulty with recognising emotional responses and lack of social awareness and empathy.

Author Tim Sullivan, very cleverly, pairs George Cross with fellow DS Josie Ottey, a married woman who is as ‘normal’ as Cross is ‘odd’. She acts as a kind of buffer between Cross and the people he must question as part of the job. What Cross brings to the party, however, is a kind of cold objectivity which, to counteract his inability to read a facial expression or tone of voice, gives him a laser-like clarity regarding the truth and logic of what witnesses or suspects tell him. The Monk is set in the Bristol area, and a body is found in the intriguingly named Goblin Combe*, a rural beauty spot beloved of hikers and tourists.

*A small dry valley beneath a hill. Commonly used in southern and south western England.

The body, brutally beaten, is found strapped to chair and abandoned in a ditch. It turns out to be that of a Benedictine monk, Brother Dominic, who had only recently been reported missing from a nearby monastic community, St Eustace’s Abbey. The victim was killed elsewhere and the corpse dumped. There only a dozen members of the order, all men who, for whatever reason, have chosen to reject the modern world in favour of a life of prayer and contemplation. George Cross rapidly sees that there are two obvious lines of enquiry; was Brother Dominic killed because of something that happened within the walls of the monastery, or did his murder relate to something in his previous life, where he was a very successful investment banker?

Without giving the game away, it is in Brother Dominic’s previous life where the clues are to be found, but answers don’t come easy for Cross and Ottey. Although there was a very clever plot twist involving the identity of the killer, I was far more involved with George Cross as a person than wondering who murdered Brother Dominic.The relationship between Cross and his father, the discombobulating effect of the re-emergence of his mother – lost to him since she left the family home when he was five – and his attraction to the unambiguous world of order, silence and simplicity of Dominic’s fellow monks, all contribute to the power of this compelling read.

The book is full of little treats and bonuses. Rather in the same way that The Nine Tailors doubled as a treatise on the arcane art of bell ringing, we learn that George Cross is an accomplished church organist, despite the concept of religious faith being totally alien to him. He spends his spare time by pushing the murder case to a corner compartment of his mind, and patiently dismantling the dysfunctional abbey pipe organ, then cleaning and re-assembling the separate parts so that the instrument can once again play a part in the liturgy. Sullivan (above left) also gives the staple of police procedural novels – the recorded interview – a new twist; Cross’s ‘disability’ is a blessing when it comes to his interview technique, as neither the suspect nor the duty lawyer can make head nor tail of his literal approach to everything that is said. Mistaking him for an idiot, however, becomes a serious error of judgment.

Sullivan’s experience as a film director and screenwriter gives the narrative an intensely visual feel, but he wisely lets us picture George Cross in our own way, providing little or no physical description of him. The Monk is a brilliant police procedural with an engaging central character and a clever plot. Published by Head of Zeus, it will be out on 27th April.

April 18, 2023 2

THE CLOSE . . . Between the covers

Jane Casey’s DS Maeve Kerrigan series hits double figures with The Close. The London copper first has to deal with the murder of a doctor, Hassan Dawoud, found dead in his car in the hospital car park. His husband Cameron is a likely suspect, as the pair often fought, but he has an unshakable alibi. Then she is seriously sidetracked. The death of a vulnerable man called Davy Bidwell, found virtually mummified in a derelict house, has raised serious questions. Why was his broken body covered in all kinds of wounds, and what became of him after he left his last known address – in Jellicoe Close, an apparently safe middle-class suburban street?

One – or perhaps several – of the long term residents of Jellicoe Close must know what happened to Davy Bidwell. The death has left the Met with egg all over its gold braid ceremonial uniform, and in order to make up for earlier failings, the top brass decide to plant two officers – disguised as civilians – into the community in an attempt to discover what happened.The two chosen for this surveillance are Kerrigan – and DI Josh Derwent, They are ‘of an age’ to be a plausible couple, and are smart enough to pull off the deception that they are house-sitting for a genuine resident.

Meanwhile, Kerrigan has to try to keep tabs on the Hassan Dawoud investigation on the phone to her colleague DC Georgia Shaw, who comes over as attractive and talkative, but perhaps not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Jane Casey uses a sizeable chunk of the middle part of the book to dwell on the “will-they-won’t-they” aspect of Kerrigan’s relationship with Derwent. As they they insert themselves into the social dynamic of Jellicoe Close, a certain amount of public affection is necessary to keep up the charade, but what happens when the pair are out of the public gaze? Jane Casey (left) lets us know that the killer is watching and observing the newcomers as they blend into the suburban lifestyle of over-the-fence gossip, barbecues, football matches and drinks parties.

Although the residents of Jellicoe Close are not on an island, Jane Casey recreates a similar sense of claustrophobia and mistrust pioneered all those years ago by Agatha Christie in And Then There Were None. The parallel, I suppose, is that what traps the people in Jellicoe Close is not the sea, but a combination of their own suspicions, misplaced loyalties and prejudices. After several false turns – and another death – the two detectives find a way through the maze of apparently conflicting accounts of the events which led up to the death of Davy Bidwell.

Meanwhile, the not-as-dim-as-we-thought Georgia Shaw has cracked the case of the killing of Hassan Dawoud, which only leaves Kerrigan and Derwent to mull over the effects of their pretence as lovers. The romantic relationship between Kerrigan and Derwent became a bit too breathless for me, but that didn’t spoil my enjoyment of a cracking police procedural where the main characters are skillfully drawn on a carefully observed backdrop of suburban life and – more importantly – the reality behind the charade that “perfect” families sometimes present to the public gaze is exposed as a charade. The Close is published by Harper Collins and is available now.

March 15, 2023 0