Two mid-level criminals turn up dead at the start of In Good Hands, Bill James’s eleventh entry in his ambitious and literary crime series featuring Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur. It turns out that Raoul Brace – referred to by cops and criminals alike as the original very nice guy – and Lester Magellan have met their violent ends in an uncomfortably familiar way, their bodies battered and burned, with a piece of coal shoved in Brace’s mouth. The tableau recalls the dispatching of two earlier underworld villains, their deaths rumored to have been vigilante killings by an enraged Assistant Chief Constable who, fed up with the courts failing to punish those who deserved it, might have decided to mete out his own justice. (See James’s brilliant, game-changing third installment Halo Parade (1987) for all the sordid details.)
The similarities bring about an internal investigation, something that well-meaning but ineffectual Chief Mark Lane feels is a necessary self-policing step, loathe as he is to attack the ambitious and dangerous ACC Desmond Iles. As Iles fences with the lead investigator, Harpur is asked by Lane to commit to covert surveillance on his supervisor, something Harpur finds both distasteful and impossible. Once Iles spots his lumbering tail – and gives Harpur a couple clouts in an alley for good measure – he grows literary:
The similarities bring about an internal investigation, something that well-meaning but ineffectual Chief Mark Lane feels is a necessary self-policing step, loathe as he is to attack the ambitious and dangerous ACC Desmond Iles. As Iles fences with the lead investigator, Harpur is asked by Lane to commit to covert surveillance on his supervisor, something Harpur finds both distasteful and impossible. Once Iles spots his lumbering tail – and gives Harpur a couple clouts in an alley for good measure – he grows literary:
“You’ll remember that wonderful analysis by George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, in Character of a Trimmer, seventeenth century.”
“Will I, sir?” He felt a little dazed now but could not risk standing unsupported yet.
“Oh, certainly you will,” Iles said. “Goes like this, doesn’t it? ‘Without laws the world would become a wilderness, and men little less than beasts; but with all this, the best things may come to be the worst, if they are not in good hands.’”
The tension (or uneasy conspiracy) between Harpur and Iles as the internal investigation unfolds takes up half of this unusual police procedural. The other storyline, equally engaging, concerns a pair of thieves preparing to rob the home and safe of upwardly mobile drug kingpin Kenward Knapp while he soaks up societal goodwill at a charity auction. As is the author’s hallmark, James masterfully winds and shapes his characters, placing them on a collision course where not everyone will remain standing at the end. The pompous, scheming Stan Stanfield and his older partner in crime, a wary but gifted safecracker named Beau Derek, are wonderfully sketched serio-comic creations. Stanfield takes on a third man for the job, a black teen named Cyrus, and as doubts seep in about this addition, further pressure builds within the group.
The dynamic storylines and fully established worlds within the Harpur & Iles stories sometimes offer excellent starting points for new readers. I would recommend the excellent titles Halo Parade or Protection (1988) to those looking for an introduction where the series is both accessible and firing on all cylinders. Even the unique, emotionally charged Roses, Roses (1993), with its impressionistic chronicling of a woman’s last hours in life provides a suitable standalone reading experience.
In contrast, In Good Hands feels very much a tale delivered in medias series, and in my opinion James relies on the accumulated build of his characters and their personalities over the last ten books to lend emotional weight to their current circumstances. It is a book best arrived at in sequence, especially as a supporting character is stabbed and dies – needlessly and tangentially, as too often happens in life – in a middle chapter. Yet the victim’s agreeable personality and history are to be found in the earlier series books; taken as represented by this story alone, the loss scarcely registers. But having gotten to know the character through previous adventures, the veteran reader is shocked and moved by the sudden tragic event.
The dynamic storylines and fully established worlds within the Harpur & Iles stories sometimes offer excellent starting points for new readers. I would recommend the excellent titles Halo Parade or Protection (1988) to those looking for an introduction where the series is both accessible and firing on all cylinders. Even the unique, emotionally charged Roses, Roses (1993), with its impressionistic chronicling of a woman’s last hours in life provides a suitable standalone reading experience.
In contrast, In Good Hands feels very much a tale delivered in medias series, and in my opinion James relies on the accumulated build of his characters and their personalities over the last ten books to lend emotional weight to their current circumstances. It is a book best arrived at in sequence, especially as a supporting character is stabbed and dies – needlessly and tangentially, as too often happens in life – in a middle chapter. Yet the victim’s agreeable personality and history are to be found in the earlier series books; taken as represented by this story alone, the loss scarcely registers. But having gotten to know the character through previous adventures, the veteran reader is shocked and moved by the sudden tragic event.
All the qualities that make Bill James’s stories so remarkable and singular are fully evident here: biting, literary dark humor; a keen psychological interest in the aspiring criminal classes and the sometimes flawed and dangerous law enforcement figures trying to keep them in check; and always the thematic question of what exactly separates the good guys from the bad guys when both are willing to ignore the law if the rules should limit the world they wish to create. It may be a novel better appreciated by those already familiar with the variegated world of Harpur and Iles, but all readers will still find themselves in the author’s highly capable, very good hands.
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