When the heist is finally pulled off, halfway through the novel, Colin ambush doesn’t work out as expected. Driven by anger, guilt, and fear, hunting down the killer becomes a personal affair for Colin.

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. 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... Hywel Bennett, shorn of his baby face and much puffier due to his drinking dominates. There is no subtlety in his character.You're not the first reader to invoke revenge tragedies in discussing James, though you are the first I've seen to throw Basil Fawlty into the mix. I suspect James would be delighted. In 1976 you wrote a book on the novels of Anthony Powell - it has even been suggested that the Harpur and Iles series is a kind of inverted A Dance to the Music of Time. Has Powell influenced your approach to series writing?

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. Crime drama serial. A pair of none too friendly Welsh C.I.D. men team up to investigate the kidnapping of the son of a gangster. His novel Whose Little Girl are You, written under the "David Craig" pseudonym, was filmed as The Squeeze, 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. 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 Abbott frets over Forgotten Books. "I'm worried great books of the recent past are sliding out of print and out of our consciousness," she writes, and she asks other bloggers to help out by retrieving a book from the ranks of the forgotten. I like her idea so much that I'm suggesting a whole series: Bill James' Harpur & Iles novels. It's never too late to talk about Bill James. And I like your description of Harpur & Iles' universe. It's like are own, but in a twisted version. 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.

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... The biggest influence on my style probably came when I worked for the Daily Mirror in London. Tabloid style is terse and plain. I think I try for these qualities in the books, though I can fall into wool now and then. On the other hand journalism hates irony - because readers might take leg-pulls literally. But I feel free to do a bit of irony now. Also, many newspaper 'stories,' as news reports are known in the trade, are to a formula. I've had to try and get out of that with made-up stories meant to go between covers.Impish and perhaps hyperbolic, but with a purpose. I suspect that no one on this Earth has read enough crime fiction to make such a judgment. But he is the finest crime-fiction prose stylist I have ever read. Did you have in mind folks like G.K. Chesterton, Graham Greene or even Joseph Conrad, if one wants to call The Secret Agent crime fiction? If so, I shall have replies ready. Writer: Don Shaw / Novels: Bill James / Producer: Jane Dauncey / Executive Producer: Jen Samson / Director: Jim Hill I don't read much crime, for fear of aping someone else's tone of voice without knowing it. I do remain bowled over by The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by the late George V Higgins, a stupendous US novel (and Mitchum film) which can make that most despised of creatures - a grass - sympathetic.

This blog is a proud winner of the 2009 Spinetingler Award for special services to the industry and its blogkeeper a proud former guest on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here on Earth. In civilian life I'm a copy editor in Philadelphia. When not reading crime fiction, I like to read history. When doing neither, I like to travel. When doing none of the above, I like listening to music or playing it, the latter rarely and badly.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? 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... What Colin doesn’t expect is that one of his juniors is going to go missing- the same cop who wife Colin is having some bit of adultery. Everything else gets complicated for Colin when tipsters get murders as it appears that the gang is getting rid of the loose ends before they can finally stage their major heist.