With the focus on an intriguing new character and a new and competitive drug dealing locale, Eton Crop becomes both a great standalone novel and one of the best stories to date in Bill James’s Harpur and Iles series. The character is young undercover agent-in-training Naomi Anstruther, and the location is an amusingly kitschy floating restaurant named The Eton Boating Song. The setup is simple but the narrative winds and weaves in satisfying and unpredictable ways. Two local Eton dealers have been killed by London players looking to expand; their corner table with its signaling glass of rum and black is now vacant. Anstruther is tasked to align herself with Mansel Shale’s group and become the next Eton dealer. This time, Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur will be in the restaurant, ready with his undercover men to catch the out-of-town assassins.
But those who have delighted in James’s hilarious, brutal, and surprising series – Eton Crop is the sixteenth entry – should know that events are not guaranteed to go as planned and can often turn to nightmare for cops and criminals alike. What is fascinating here is that the obvious hook that would surely generate suspense for any other crime fiction writer – i.e., Will the undercover agent be discovered by the gang she infiltrates? – is subverted at the outset. Shale knows full well that Anstruther is a plant (his intel is just as good as Harpur’s) but stands to benefit from the charade, so he proceeds carefully.
With this excellent book, the author continues to add to a cumulative, serial narrative that gives characters a chance to speak, act, and reveal their personalities in fascinating and contradictory ways. “Panicking” Ralph Ember has survived much intermittent peril. Ralphy is a vain bar owner who has formed an uneasy alliance with the other local kingpin, Manse Shale, since both are threatened by the London forces trying to take over the drug trade in James’s always unnamed city. Art dealer and informant Jack Lamb provides Harpur, and only Harpur, with useful intel while wearing era-appropriate costumes whenever they have their midnight meetings at deserted WWII battlements. Even Ember and Shale’s junior partners in crime, Beau Derek and Alfie Ivis respectively, are wonderfully drawn creations, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and rhythms of speech.
And as for Naomi, Bill James shows how adept, and how unique, he is at shaping characterization and psychological terrain. Over just two chapters (Ch. 4 and 5), the reader meets this woman and learns everything relevant about her through the character’s actions, words, and internal thoughts. In a way, it’s a minimalist portrait, as we follow her vacation with her boyfriend to Torremolinos, the friction that ensues while there from her commitment to go undercover – he rightly argues that, once undertaken, his relationship with “Naomi” will dissolve and “Angela Rivers” will be an unreachable stranger to him – and her only-live-once fling with a vacationing Welshman named Lyndon during the return flight to England. It’s a wonderful introduction, alternately letting us empathize and judge the young officer’s choices and her admirable but perhaps misplaced devotion to duty.
But those who have delighted in James’s hilarious, brutal, and surprising series – Eton Crop is the sixteenth entry – should know that events are not guaranteed to go as planned and can often turn to nightmare for cops and criminals alike. What is fascinating here is that the obvious hook that would surely generate suspense for any other crime fiction writer – i.e., Will the undercover agent be discovered by the gang she infiltrates? – is subverted at the outset. Shale knows full well that Anstruther is a plant (his intel is just as good as Harpur’s) but stands to benefit from the charade, so he proceeds carefully.
With this excellent book, the author continues to add to a cumulative, serial narrative that gives characters a chance to speak, act, and reveal their personalities in fascinating and contradictory ways. “Panicking” Ralph Ember has survived much intermittent peril. Ralphy is a vain bar owner who has formed an uneasy alliance with the other local kingpin, Manse Shale, since both are threatened by the London forces trying to take over the drug trade in James’s always unnamed city. Art dealer and informant Jack Lamb provides Harpur, and only Harpur, with useful intel while wearing era-appropriate costumes whenever they have their midnight meetings at deserted WWII battlements. Even Ember and Shale’s junior partners in crime, Beau Derek and Alfie Ivis respectively, are wonderfully drawn creations, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and rhythms of speech.
And as for Naomi, Bill James shows how adept, and how unique, he is at shaping characterization and psychological terrain. Over just two chapters (Ch. 4 and 5), the reader meets this woman and learns everything relevant about her through the character’s actions, words, and internal thoughts. In a way, it’s a minimalist portrait, as we follow her vacation with her boyfriend to Torremolinos, the friction that ensues while there from her commitment to go undercover – he rightly argues that, once undertaken, his relationship with “Naomi” will dissolve and “Angela Rivers” will be an unreachable stranger to him – and her only-live-once fling with a vacationing Welshman named Lyndon during the return flight to England. It’s a wonderful introduction, alternately letting us empathize and judge the young officer’s choices and her admirable but perhaps misplaced devotion to duty.
The paragraphs above, which praise plot and character, don’t adequately capture just how enjoyable Bill James’s books are, and how teeming they are with life, insights, wit, and vivid turns of phrase. The crime stories are written in almost a stylistic shorthand (which, depending on the character, can be quite verbose and circuitous) that readers become familiar with as they stay in this fictional world and learn the language and the customs of the denizens there. There are some stories that I feel could be approached by new readers as standalone entries, and Eton Crop is one of these: Naomi Anstruther provides the compelling anchor and keeps the kitschy restaurant afloat, right up to its unpredictable climax.
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