Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11018 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL
'If you don't know this superb British series set in Portsmouth, there is no better place to begin. The Prince of Darkness is vintage Hurley, with brilliant characters, a superb plot and a great story about loyalty and betrayal.'

Review
"A cracking read" (SOUTH WALES ARGUS )

'Questions of loyalty and betrayal are handled with quite as much skill as the standard crime-novel apparatus of violence and suspense.' (GOOD BOOK GUIDE )

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
'[His] Portsmouth-based series gets better with each book... Hurley handles the two stories skilfully, with a particularly good murder mystery and, as always, vividly realised characters.'

Customer Reviews

The Price of Darkness - Graham Hurley
D/I Faraday is back investigating the professional shooting of a property developer. Then a government minister is shot dead whilst sitting in the back of his chauffered car in a traffic queue on the way to the railway station. Faraday become deputy SIO on both cases, until the second case is taken away from him due to political beliefs that terrorism is involved.

Meanwhile D/C Winter is undercover, working for the local big time criminal Bazza Mackenzie. In the previous novel "One Under", Mackenzie had humiliated D/C Winter and has photographic evidence to remind Paul Winter.

This is a police procedural that is at the top - there is no detailed descriptions of blood and gore, the beating that D/C Winter gets is not graphically described but the true slog and frustrations of the Police investigatory work is depicted in detail. Hurley does this in a way that "dullness" never creeps in but through writing that gets you hooked and immersed into the story line.

There is a lot of reported speech which has the effect of convincing realism and gives the feel of imagining the team at work and avoids repetition/recap of scenes which would slow the pace down and may become tedious to read. Hurley is a talented documentary maker and he has brought these skills to his writing.

There is also an underlying theme of the police officers questioning the situations that they face in the modern world and the changes to society.

The characters remain strong and believable and certainly easy to visualise. D/C Winter has to really question his loyalty - both to himself and in a wider sense which may lead him to cross over to the "dark side".

Hurley gets stronger and better with this series. There are references to events that have happened earlier on in the series but these are deftly explained and should not put off anyone who is new to the Faraday and Winter series.

As good as it gets...
Police procedurals seem to be two-a-penny these days. Any old fool with a computer and a few CSI episodes on DVD think they can knock out a thriller. What separates those with genuine skill from wannabes are two things: a sense of place, and a central character.

This is why Graham Hurley is the best police procedural of the moment. His evocation of Portsmouth - its sights, sounds, atmosphere and changing context - is spot-on. The city is as much a character as any of the people within the book. This sets the characters not just in a place and time, but also fills in many of the background blanks that other authors leave.

Faraday is a character of nuance, self-doubt, and a hinterland. He is well contrasted with other characters, instead of being the be-all and end-all of a book's characterisation. He is sufficiently central to be a focal point, without having to carry the whole thing by himself. Other authors could learn from this.

Unlike many authors, Hurley does not feel the need to patronise the reader by reviewing the plot details every twenty pages. He expects you to keep up - and everything you need to do so is there - but it is refreshing to be treated like an intelligent adult.

Each book in the Faraday series takes the prevailing political and social issues along with it, without teetering into a polemic, or feeling as if contemporary references are being awkwardly shoehorned where they don't belong. In addition, it is nice to see an author who leaves threads at the end, instead of feeling obliged to wrap everything up in the last pages like a lame Scooby Doo episode.

Readers of Rankin, or any of the other mainstream procedural writers, will have their eyes opened by these books. They are light years ahead of Rebus et al, in depth, pacing, attention to detail, and contemporary insight.

Superb Addition to Excellent Series!
If you haven't read the Joe Faraday series, you've missed a treat! And you should really go back to the start to get the real benefit.

Book 8 in the series is the best yet, with two story lines weaving in and out - the first is about two murders being investigated by DI Faraday and his team, and the second is about Paul Winter working undercover with Bazza MacKenzie. It's Winter's story line that really gripped me and there are a couple of scenes when I was literally on the edge of my seat.

Winter is a fascinating character, more interesting to me than the 'star' of the series, Joe Faraday, and the next book in the series, "No Lovelier Death" (due after Christmas), was described by the author in an email to me (yes, he really does answer emails from readers!!) as "a real Winter-fest"! Can't wait!!