Gospel

Harpur & Iles #9

by Bill James

Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur is a shrewd observer of the greed, pride, and lust that motivate the criminals he pursues - and sometimes the cops he works with, too. His own vulnerable spot is occupied right now by a pretty and endearing college student with whom he is spending very pleasant afternoons. But when Denise drifts into the social circle of Jack Lamb, Harpur's wealthy and powerful underworld informant, and one of the crooks the police are pursuing is shot to death during a robbery, Denise suddenly becomes the pawn in a frightening game of revenge. With a cast including the cowardly and scheming Ralph Ember (a would-be pillar of the community) and the pompous, often cuckolded Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles, Gospel is a suspenseful, mordantly humorous story of driving ambitions on opposite sides of the law.

Genres: Mystery, Crime

224 pages, Hardcover

First published October 23, 1992

About the author

Bill James (born 1929) is a pseudonym of James Tucker, a Welsh novelist. He also writes under his own name and the pseudonyms David Craig and Judith Jones. He was a reporter with the Daily Mirror and various other newspapers after serving with the RAF He is married, with four children, and lives in South Wales.

The bulk of his output under the Bill James pseudonym is the Harpur and Iles series. Colin Harpur is a Detective Chief Inspector and Desmond Iles is the Assistant Chief Constable in an unnamed coastal city in southwestern England. Harpur and Iles are complemented by an evolving cast of other recurring characters on both sides of the law. The books are characterized by a grim humour and a bleak view of the relationship between the public, the police force and the criminal element. The first few are designated "A Detective Colin Harpur Novel" but as the series progressed they began to be published with the designation "A Harpur & Iles Mystery".

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_James_(novelist)

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Characters have way too much dialog and discussion. Do people over there actually have these time consuming discussions and rather worthless dialog?

[Debbie Stanley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book very difficult to read.