The Detective is Dead (Harpur & Iles S.) - Softcover

James, Bill

Softcover

ISBN 10: 033034854X ISBN 13: 9780330348546

Publisher: Pan Books, 1996

Synopsis

The twelfth novel in the Harpur and Iles series. When Kenward Knapp's drug dealing empire comes up for grabs, Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur finds himself caught in the middle of the scramble to take over, a scramble which leads to two brutal armed robberies and cold-blooded murder.

About this title

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 the 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: hat 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.

Book Description

'One of British crime writing's hidden jewels' Time Out

Edition details

• Publisher: Pan Books
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 033034854X
• ISBN 13: 9780330348546
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 266