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Synopsis
When thirteen-year-old drug runner Mandy Walsh is killed in a shootout between rival drug gangs, the police at first think she was accidentally caught in the crossfire. But soon they learn that someone shot her intentionally, and as Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur looks deeper the case only gets more dangerous. For Chief Constable Mark Lane, a man almost paralyzed by the collapse of civilization he sees in the relentless drug wars, the only solution to the evil is for someone to infiltrate the gangs. His sardonic assistant chief, Desmond Iles, has another solution: let the gangland police itself, in return for a few favors. Meanwhile, Mansel Shale, drug kingpin, would-be top banana, is looking for--and may have found--a working arrangement with someone on the police force. A relentless chain of events, starting with Mandy's death, comes to an exciting and unexpected conclusion.
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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.
Book Description
'One of British crime writing's hidden jewels' Time Out
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- PublisherChivers Large print (Chivers, Windsor, Paragon & C
- Publication date2000
- ISBN 10 0754038947
- ISBN 13 9780754038948
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages306
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