One of the most enjoyable incidental benefits of reading Howdunit (2020), the great collection of essays on the craft of writing mystery fiction by past and present members of The Detection Club, is the discovery of intriguing new-to-me authors whose books I now want to explore. Lionel Davidson is one such discovery, and Celia Fremlin another; both I reckon will join my reading pile soon. But the new writer who piqued my interest the most was Welsh novelist James Tucker, who has published more than two dozen police procedural books under the name Bill James. His series features Colin Harpur, a detective who works and lives by his own cynical code of morality, and Desmond Iles, a career-conscious deputy to the Chief Constable.
The two are introduced in 1985’s You’d Better Believe It, although this is Harpur’s story, and the colorful supporting cast of earnest rookie cops, cool criminals, and informants from both ends of England’s class system makes more of an impression here than Iles does. From the start, I recognized that this book displayed a tone and an approach that resonated with me: there is something highly satisfying about well-observed, darkly ironic crime writing. It’s there in the Inspector Jack Frost novels by R.D. Wingfield, and Nicolas Freeling is a master of observational character study and psychology within his books featuring Inspector Piet van der Valk. The link connecting all three authors is their artistic instinct in fleshing out through a few strokes an incidental character – from a petty street criminal to a fussy office clerk to a fatuous bourgeois businessman – and in allowing their detectives to generally make a fair and clear-eyed judgment of those whom they survey. Often, the thief has more integrity than the celebrated city politician, and the proletariat detective caught in the middle can note that irony.
You’d Better Believe It is not consumed with politics, although complaints of neutering the actions of officers because of an over-hysterical media and inter-departmental oversight are part of Harpur’s world. The narrative has a simple and absorbing chronology: from his informants, Harpur hears a rumor and tries to learn when a group of bank robbers will attack a Lloyd’s branch. A promising young officer goes missing while searching for information, and his disappearance brings Harpur closer to the man’s attractive wife. (Harpur is married, not quite happily, with two daughters.) The robbery occurs, with casualties on both sides, and the leader of the gang gets away. In the book’s third act, people disappear, bodies pile up, and Harpur becomes increasingly obsessed with catching the criminal.
Just as Bill James’ astute and deftly drawn character psychologies should be celebrated, he shares with Nicolas Freeling a willingness to allow his procedural plots to sport the rough and unpredictable edges of reality. In Believe It’s conclusion, James takes his protagonist’s agency away from him. Although Harpur is chasing his quarry like a man possessed, he is denied the ability to end the chase on his own terms. (Others with greater power play God; the working-man detective must get out of the way and let the adults finish the game.) It is a fearless choice on the author’s part, especially for his series début, but it feels exactly right. In reality, and especially in a world where honorable and corrupt intentions commingle in the same character, there are very few moments of clean, justice-prevails closure.
You’d Better Believe It is not consumed with politics, although complaints of neutering the actions of officers because of an over-hysterical media and inter-departmental oversight are part of Harpur’s world. The narrative has a simple and absorbing chronology: from his informants, Harpur hears a rumor and tries to learn when a group of bank robbers will attack a Lloyd’s branch. A promising young officer goes missing while searching for information, and his disappearance brings Harpur closer to the man’s attractive wife. (Harpur is married, not quite happily, with two daughters.) The robbery occurs, with casualties on both sides, and the leader of the gang gets away. In the book’s third act, people disappear, bodies pile up, and Harpur becomes increasingly obsessed with catching the criminal.
Just as Bill James’ astute and deftly drawn character psychologies should be celebrated, he shares with Nicolas Freeling a willingness to allow his procedural plots to sport the rough and unpredictable edges of reality. In Believe It’s conclusion, James takes his protagonist’s agency away from him. Although Harpur is chasing his quarry like a man possessed, he is denied the ability to end the chase on his own terms. (Others with greater power play God; the working-man detective must get out of the way and let the adults finish the game.) It is a fearless choice on the author’s part, especially for his series début, but it feels exactly right. In reality, and especially in a world where honorable and corrupt intentions commingle in the same character, there are very few moments of clean, justice-prevails closure.
Harpur’s pair of police informants also lend the story a powerful study in contrasts. (The British term “nark” is used throughout for this role, not to be confused with the American use, which signals narcotics and vice law enforcement.) On the upper shelf perches Jack Lamb, a garrulously respectable white wheeler-dealer who floats seamlessly between bankers and burglars. (After showing off a pair of valuable paintings inside a van to Harpur and his wife parked outside a society party, Megan asks her husband afterwards, “Did they fall off the back of a lorry into the back of a lorry?”) Harpur’s other contact is Royston Payne, a black hospital laundryman who traffics in pot instead of fine art, but whose life is also worth something, despite what the Jack Lambs of the world might think. It may be tempting to dismiss Royston as a stereotype, a lower class, ganja-smoking laborer, but the character and the details feel authentic in this world right down to his family, highly suspicious of the white cop whom their husband and father has chosen to associate with.
There is so much cultural anthropology, captured in a restless snapshot of 1980’s British urban dissatisfaction, that You’d Better Believe It completely engaged and often surprised me in terms of story, character, setting, and drive. Obviously, it is not the perfect fit for all readers, and classic puzzle fans may want to keep with Christie and Queen. But I am excited to see such a strong start to a crime fiction series, and will soon approach James’ next title, The Lolita Man. I have heard whispers from my narks that the second book ups the ante, and is more visceral than the first. I will find out what awaits Detective Harpur and me soon.
There is so much cultural anthropology, captured in a restless snapshot of 1980’s British urban dissatisfaction, that You’d Better Believe It completely engaged and often surprised me in terms of story, character, setting, and drive. Obviously, it is not the perfect fit for all readers, and classic puzzle fans may want to keep with Christie and Queen. But I am excited to see such a strong start to a crime fiction series, and will soon approach James’ next title, The Lolita Man. I have heard whispers from my narks that the second book ups the ante, and is more visceral than the first. I will find out what awaits Detective Harpur and me soon.
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