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. Patti, I especially recommend books seven ( Astride a Grave) through sixteen ( Eton Crop). The preceding books are good, but James really finds his themes in the seventh. May 09, 2008 Philip Amos said... Were you having an impish moment when you wrote that last sentence, Peter? May 09, 2008 pattinase (abbott) said... By the way, I see from your profile that you liked The Ice Harvest. I've posted some comments about Scott Phillips here. May 09, 2008 Anonymous said...

Iles has internal affairs sniffing about. As well as an up and coming detective having an affair with his wife.In his first book, Bill James applied the same technique of dropping the reader in the midst of an investigation, and it’s a great change of pace for many authors who love to build up everything right from the beginning. In both cases, the author nails the voice of the cast and makes the whole situation believable. On the other hand, Harpur is left to wander around the city guessing where the serial killer might strike next. Eventually, Harpur’s investigation leads him somewhere and this results to more rivalry subplot, and soon Iles begins suspecting Harpur’s involvement with the Catholic cop with results to some bad exchanges.

And setting, as she does, her fictional mystery writers in the real world of UK crime writing, with its Crime Writers' Association and its Dagger Awards, paradoxically makes the novel less realistic. Even so, taken on its own terms, Killing The Shadows is an absorbing read, an entertaining showcase for McDermid's abundant talents. McDermid not quite at her peak is still head and shoulders above pretty much all of the competition. I jumped on the Bill James bandwagon five or six years ago, when I first started reading crime fiction. I mean, I remember where I was and what I was doing the first time someone handed me one of his novels. It is a mystery to me, too, why he is not better known. Is he too literary for crime-fiction circles and too crime-fiction for literary circles? The first book in the lengthy Harpur and Iles series is a beautiful introduction to the dark world of Colin Harpur, a DCS and a rising star in the police department in his mid-30. Colin spends most of his time hunting down criminal elements in the small southern town.Your criminals display good as well as bad qualities and your policemen (Harpur and Iles in particular) are often rather unpleasant. This blurring of the boundaries between good and evil is obviously important to you - what are you hoping to achieve by doing this?

I write about organised crime, not single murders. I didn't think organised crime would be credible in Wales. We don't have cities like Glasgow, Manchester, London where large scale criminal operations happen. This is good from the point of view of living here; not so good from the crime fiction point of view. But I thought that once the Bay got going, with the huge sums of money involved, then organised crime became a possibility. So, I started the Brade and Jenkins books. Whereas Harpur and Iles are in a nowhere city, Brade and Jenkins are very Cardiff. I have another Cardiff book coming out in January, 2005, with a girl detective leading. It's called Hear Me Talking To You, and appears under my David Craig pen name. Brade and Jenkins get a mention in this one, but that's about all. So, if Wales has been neglected for crime, i'm working on it at the Cardiff end. His best known work, written under the "David Craig" pseudonym and originally titled Whose Little Girl are You, is The Squeeze, which was turned into a film starring Stacy Keach, Edward Fox and David Hemmings. The fourth Harpur & Iles novel, Protection, was televised by the BBC in 1996 as Harpur & Iles, starring Aneirin Hughes as Harpur and Hywel Bennett as Iles. The second book in Harpur & Iles series takes place shortly after the series debut novel, and we find Colin Harpur and his team in the small fictional town of England collecting leads after the 5th rape and the killing of a 14-year-old girl in the last couple of months.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.

Finally, given that you spend a lot of time writing about unsavoury criminal behaviour do you have a jaundiced view of society and mankind in general?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. Also I tried to understand the psyche of a born second-in-command — someone who had a big job, but not the biggest. Iles will never make it to chief constable. What kind of personality does this produce? Answer: not eternally sweet; sometimes manic." June 06, 2011 Paula A Treichler said... Your comment about oneness of style with content shall likely spark further comment from me. May 09, 2008 Steve Allan said... There is something in what you say. Commentators often invoke drama when talking about Bill James, and I find some of his best books delightfully theatrical. The similarity of speaking styles may contribute to that effect, as if the characters are speaking lines. I like the effect, and it might be a worthwhile experiment to keep your comment in mind as I reread one of the books. Thanks very much for a thought-provoking comment. March 03, 2010 jwarthen said...