Product Description

A girl is shot down, caught in the crossfire between two rival drug gangs. For Chief Constable Lane there is only one option - infiltrate the gangs and rid his patch of this menace. Meanwhile, DCS Harpur, investigating Mandy's death, discovers that the bullets were not fired by the warring gangs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #453046 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From the Author
With the publication of KILL ME in paperback next year, there are now seventeen books in the Harpur and Iles series. I publish one a year and very occasionally two. The next, PAY DAYS, comes out in hardback in 2001 in the UK and the US. I had no idea when I started in the mid-1980s that the series would run to this number. I won't say, as some authors do, that the characters took over. But having established my pair, I'm reluctant to waste them, in any sense. I'll probably go to at least twenty.

They are two high-ranking police officers. Harpur, the main figure by a whisker, is a detective chief superintendent, and Iles, his boss, an Assistant Chief Constable. In an unnamed English city, they fight organised crime - mainly drug dealing - through their own, not always wholly legal methods. In particular, Iles's unspoken work philosophy is 'the end justifies the means'. He is believed to have murdered two villains who got off in court after killing an undercover detective (see HALO PARADE). This episode constantly recurs in his thinking (see IN GOOD HANDS and ETON CROP) Neither he nor Harpur is on the take, but they'll do almost anthing to put away some of those they believe crooked (and whom he reader knows are crooked): only some - Iles runs alliances with a few Mr Bigs for the sake of peace on the street, to the nattering despair of his Chief. Harpus does try to control Iles's savagery now and then, without notable success. Harpur's moral authority over Iles is flimsy, not just because he is lower in rank, but because he has had an affair with Iles's wife, and Iles knows it.

My aim in these books is to humanise as much as I can both crooks and cops: that is, to give them full characterisation, not put them in roles as representatives of evil and good. This can bring them very close on the ethical scale and, I hope, produces good suspense and, above all, much not necessarily comfortable laughter. The reviewers who please me most find the books not only taut but funny.

Customer Reviews

Another part of a superior series
This is the thirteenth book in the Harpur and Iles series, begun in 1985 and starring the sarcastic DCS and devious ACC of an unspecified provincial police force. Mandy, a just-teenage drugs courier has been killed in a shoot-out between rival gangs of dealers. The Chief Constable wants infiltration of the syndicates, but it soon appears that the sergeant he nominates for the task may already be in the pay of one of the gangs. Colin Harpur and Desmond Iles, as ever, have their own, different plans for confronting the drug barons.

Bill James excels in writing about the murky interface between coppers and villains in a style which is unique, and totally realistic, if cynical. His treatment of dialogue is especially brilliant. The only problem is that, reading just one novel is a bit like watching only a couple of episodes of a TV soap: there are so many continuing sub-plots involving the same characters, that you need to read the entire series of books in order to extract the maximum from each one. So, why don't you?

GREAT STUFF
one or two of the Harpur and Iles books are only 4-star (and some of them are a bit short), but Bill James has got to be the most consistently funny writer in this genre. Critics sometimes refer to him as underrated and I can't understand why this should be so (or perhaps not enough people share his sense of humour) - and this is annoying because we sometimes have to wait years for a paperback edition. As another reviewer suggested - start from the beginning and read them all. These are books I keep to read and re-read and thoroughly enjoy them every time. Bill James writing as David Craig produces good stuff too (mostly about the Cardiff Bay mafia) but the one James Tucker book I read (Blaze of Riot) was disappointing.