Protection (Harpur & Iles S.)

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The books are not exactly forgotten; the series is now up to twenty-three novels with a twenty-fourth due this year. But James' brand of dark betrayal, darker humor and keen social comedy has remained a connoisseur's taste, beloved of critics for the rich beauty of its prose style, among other features, but never selling in the mass numbers that its excellence deserves. Given the vast number of mystery novels published each year, the idea that someone is killing off crime writers has a certain appeal - we could do with a little winnowing. That's the central premise of Val McDermid's taut new thriller Killing The Shadows, in which academic psychologist and geographical profiler Professor Fiona Cameron hunts down a serial killer working his way through a death list of mystery writers. The killer is targeting those crime writers who have turned psychological profilers into heroes. What makes him especially dangerous is the fact that his methods shatter all conventional views on the way serial killers operate. Cameron's search is given added urgency because her lover, Kit Martin, is a crime writer - and his name is on the list.

When the heist is finally pulled off, halfway through the novel, Colin ambush doesn’t work out as expected. Driven by anger, guilt, and fear, hunting down the killer becomes a personal affair for Colin. Ultimately I suspect Harpur and Iles was green lit as a production to rival S4C and Channel 5's successful, dour Welsh 'tec thriller A Mind to Kill and to compliment the BBC's other chalk and cheese cops Dalziel and Pascoe. The fact that both of these were infinitely better than this offering ensured it was given a hasty demise and not a second thought. And I can’t resist a bit of showing off: Here’s a picture (lower left) of Bill James and me from Crimefest 2010. Iles has internal affairs sniffing about. As well as an up and coming detective having an affair with his wife.

The Harpur & Iles Series in Order (36 Books)

Crime drama serial. A pair of none too friendly Welsh C.I.D. men team up to investigate the kidnapping of the son of a gangster. Given that this is Italy, Brunetti's first reaction is to avoid official channels and see who he knows who can bring pressure to bear in the right quarters. Before he has got very far, however, the bureaucrat who first brought him the bad news rings him, fearful about some information he is going to pass on. He is then found dead after a fall from scaffolding.

What I particularly liked: Ralph Embers’ pretentiousness and his belief in his idealised self image is hilarious, and Harpur’s precocious, too old for their ages, teenage daughters are always a delight. Bill James is a veteran of the British crime writing scene and Low Pastures (Severn House, 27 January 2022) is the 36th entry in his quirky, long running series about Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur and his unpredictable boss, Assistant Chief Constable Iles.Peter, you've persuaded me! Books 7 to 16 are now on the tbr list. May 09, 2008 Peter Rozovsky said...

What I was less keen on: the pace is slow and Low Pastures is really a repeat of earlier books in the series, which has not progressed in recent years. This blog is a proud winner of the 2009 Spinetingler Award for special services to the industry and its blogkeeper a proud former guest on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here on Earth. In civilian life I'm a copy editor in Philadelphia. When not reading crime fiction, I like to read history. When doing neither, I like to travel. When doing none of the above, I like listening to music or playing it, the latter rarely and badly. I'm gratified. I remember the afternoon when I was sitting in a secondhand bookshop, and the laconic owner handed me a copy of Roses, Roses (tenth in the series) and said, "Here. You might like this." (Or was he phlegmatic? Perhaps he was laconic on his mother's side, phlegmatic on his father's.)Before the success of your Harpur and Iles series you wrote numerous books, some of them non-crime - how do you view those early works now? The first few books in the series are dubbed A Detective Colin Harpur novel, but later books are designated A Harpur & Iles Mystery.