The Detective Is Dead (Harpur and Iles Series #12)

by Bill James

Overview

"A tremendous writer. . . . Where else can you find a mystery series with as many layers of gorgeous stuff?"—Chicago Tribune

"The detective is dead" because the old process of justice doesn't work any more. No one, including Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur, would testify at the trial; Harpur refused to name his informant. The three murderers who were being tried are part of a savage underworld struggle for the lucrative domain of the late drug baron Kenward Knapp. The story opens as the three assemble at Ralph Embers's seedy club "The Monty" to celebrate their acquittal. The key player behind the scenes is ambitious drug dealer Keith Vine, now an informant for Harpur. Vine's partners have been murdered and his life is in danger. Harpur wants to send him (and his smart, beautiful, pregnant girlfriend, Becky) safely abroad, while the coldly plotting ACC Desmond Iles wants to keep him here, to serve as bait for the killers. Part pawn, part murderous player himself, reaching hungrily for the Knapp riches, Vine disappears into a labyrinth of fear and greed, twisting through schemes and alliances that very likely will destroy him.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393322460
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/17/2002
Series:	Harpur and Iles Series , #12
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	4.50(w) x 7.20(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

Hard-edged narratives that leave readers gasping and flinching.... A ferociously poetic voice.

Times [London]

[A] terrific series.... Get these books; settle into peril and chaos.

Bloomsbury Review

A tremendous writer... . Where else can you find a mystery series with as many layers of gorgeous stuff?

Chicago Tribune

An unconventional and spicy tour de force... . James is terrific.

Frances Fyfield

While modern readers may not be familiar with the notorious Rhinelander trial of 1924, Lewis (dean of graduate studies at the University of Michigan) and Ardizzone (visiting assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame) offer a detailed account of the various people and complex issues that made it sensational. Young, white and a member of New York society, Leonard Rhinelander spent some three years courting working-class Alice Jones. After the wedding and a few nights of marital bliss at Jones's parents' home, young Lenny sued to have his marriage annulled, claiming he didn't know Alice wasn't white. In fact, Alice's mother was white; her father was an Englishman the son of a white woman and an unidentified man who may been Indian who never entertained the question of his race. While Alice's family never consciously tried to "pass" for white, they lived in a sort of racial limbo, letting their social status define them. It was left to an upstate New York judge and jury to determine whether Alice was "white," "colored" or "Negro" terms not clearly defined but certainly hotly debated in 1920s America. In addition to being a legal quagmire, the Rhinelander trial unleashed a Pandora's box of morality questions (in the end, it seems neither premarital sex or interracial sex was as scandalous as cross-class marriage). Although not graceful writers, Lewis and Ardizzone cleverly build their narrative on the progression of the trial, careful not to foreshadow the verdict. Small photo insets give a scrapbook-look to this dense but fascinating volume. (May) Forecast: If Norton's marketing effectively reaches the core academic audience for this book and jump-starts it through word of mouth, students of African-American and women's studies will find this an engrossing read as will historians of many stripes despite its clunky prose. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

First published as a scholarly article and later reorganized and rewritten, this work results from a collaboration between Lewis (history, African American studies, Univ. of Michigan) and Ardizzone, his former graduate student. The authors researched the events surrounding the 1925 annulment trial in a Westchester County courtroom involving Leonard Rhinelander, son of a privileged, aristocratic New York family, who married Alice Jones, a beautiful working-class woman of mixed-race ancestry. Pressured to end the marriage, young Rhinelander claimed that Jones had misrepresented her race. Using dozens of American newspapers as primary sources, the authors explore racial ambiguity during a period of stiffening segregation policy. At times, the text is repetitive or bloated with conjecture, dragging out the undoubtedly painful scandal like the newspaper coverage of the day. Those accounts described Jones as dusky, octoroon, quadroon, colored, Negro, mulatto, and black, distinctions that faded with the pursuit of palpable civil rights decades later. An intriguing story; recommended for public and academic libraries. Elaine Machleder, Bronx, NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

The bizarre Jazz Age tale of a dopey aristocrat and the lowly young woman he wed then tried to shed, invoking some highly charged issues of sex, class, race, and forgotten niceties. Back in 1924, Leonard Kip Rhinelander, scion of a wealthy old New York family, married comely Alice Jones. After one month and six days, Kip left his bride and filed a noxious lawsuit seeking to have his marriage annulled. She fooled him, he said. Alice didn't tell him that she was "colored." The Rhinelander case was made for the press, mainstream as well as yellow. Reporters besieged Alice's family, describing her white mother and "dusky" father (both immigrants from England), as well as her sisters and their consorts. Feckless Kip, it appeared, had known the family well before the nuptials, and after the wedding had lodged chez Jones with his bride. Disenchantment with Cinderella began when Papa Rhinelander found out about his new daughter-in-law and promptly dispatched his lawyers to redeem the blessed family name. It was a time when pseudo-science, at the service of social taboos, was preoccupied with racial assignment. The country, as well as the jury, wanted to know if a blueblood had been allied with a woman who had "black blood in her veins." Did Alice dupe Kip by pretending to be pure white? Did she vamp him and make him her "love slave," or was the lad simply lacking in stalwart manliness? During proceedings that resembled a carnival as much as a trial, minstrel man Al Jolson was called to testify that he never met Alice, the mother of the bride was grilled, and (because race was thought to be more evident around one's torso) Alice was obliged to disrobe before the gentlemen of the jury. Yet demureAlice, back in her cloche, prevailed and Kip, in his spats, faded away. A decidedly jarring echo from the Roaring Twenties, neatly culled from press reports.

Kirkus Reviews