Gospel (Harpur and Iles Series #9)

by Bill James

Overview

"James's police procedurals are second to none....An entertaining and provocative addition to an impressive series."—Booklist

At nineteen years old, Colin Harpur's girlfriend Denise Prior knows little about criminals, and even less about the law. When Denise drifts into the social circle of Harpur's number-one informant Jack Lamb, and one of the criminals is shot to death during a robbery, Denise's life is suddenly in danger and Harpur must solve a new crime-before it happens.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393317817
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/17/1998
Series:	Harpur and Iles Series , #9
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Bill James has been called "the Elmore Leonard of Britain's underworld" (Kirkus Reviews) and has been named a "Master of Crime" in a mystery roundup by the London Sunday Times, which said, "There is nothing else quite like this series of police procedurals. James is concerned with the dilemmas and difficulties of policing Britain's inner cities, and he addresses these in hard-edged narratives that leave readers gasping and flinching, praying the people in these stories never come to live in their streets." In addition to the Harpur and Iles series, James is the author of other mystery series and a book on Anthony Powell. He lives in Wales.

Editorial Reviews

Clever and complex, James's ninth police procedural featuring Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur explores the shadowy, dangerous world of "grasses"informers with one foot in the underworld, the other in the police camp and a precarious grasp on the future. Jack Lamb, an art dealer of questionable respectability but certain wealth, is Harpur's major grass. It's a tip from Lamb that allows the police successfully to ambush an armed robbery resulting in the death of dull-witted thief Martin Webb. Doug Webb, Martin's father, is intent on revenge against both Harpur and suspected grass Lamb. As in other James novels, both the police cast and the criminal one are full of recurring characters waging a virtual class war in which some cops have more in common with some criminals (and vice-versa) than with their colleagues. Harpur, never a paragon of domestic virtue, is having an affair with a pretty college student, Denise Prior, and her innocent friendship with Lamb's girlfriend marks her as a possible informer and an easy target for Webb's revenge. Webb forms an uneasy alliance with "Panicking" Ralph Ember and Courtney Sanquhar-Perry to pull off a big score, but he also plots vengeance on his own. As he has in earlier entries (Astride the Grave, etc.), James again delivers dead-on dialogue and colorful characters on both sides of the law whose seamless credibility lifts this series well above the ordinary. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

"Thou shalt not overlap" is the unofficial commandment of the CID, but Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur (Astride a Grave, 1996, etc.), continuing to flout the rules, has fallen out of lust with Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles's wife Sarah only to take up with Denise Prior, a first-year university student whose friend Helen Surtees is the live-in companion to Jack Lamb, Harpur's most venerable informant. A dangerous situation for sweet Denise—especially since crime-family patriarch Doug Webb strongly (and accurately) suspects Lamb of dealing Harpur the information that let the coppers get the drop on Doug's son Martin, witless mastermind of a third-rate robbery that left Martin dead and his father grimly bent on revenge against everyone who might've been involved. Scrambling to keep Denise out of harm's way, Harpur still has time for a spot of breaking and entering, an accidental episode of eavesdropping on Iles's latest tryst, and several matey conversations with panicking Ralph Ember, the hopelessly middle-class thief-cum-pub- owner who can't get over his jealousy of Lamb's Gatsby-like success. Meantime, all concerned act as deviously uninterested as possible as they race toward the climax at Lamb's annual fancy- dress ball.

Lamb's gospel of principles—he feeds information only where there's the risk of violence to bystanders, or where he has a personal grudge against the planners—is the perfect focus for this ninth installment in James's heartlessly funny series.

Kirkus Reviews