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Getting Tyson
Detective Superintendent Mike Prosser knows East London thug, Big Dave Tyson was responsible for his WPC daughter's horrific death, but he can't prove it. After two years of trauma Mike is beginning to function as a copper again and his brain is on the case. But since Tyson could afford to pay someone else to do his killing he's always just out of reach of the law and whenever they do get within touching distance of putting him away, his brilliant, charismatic lawyer, Marcus Swift always finds a way to slide him from their grasp. Until fate takes a hand. There's sex too. There's Tyson's Playboy Centrefold wife, Francine and a beautiful French prosecutor called Dominique Harcourt (Miss Hardcore to Mike Prosser). They make things happen.
371 pages, Paperback
First published December 19, 2015
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June 17, 2021
3★
“‘Is this your first fire victim, Chief Superintendent?’ the pathologist asked him. ‘No,’ he answered.‘But it’s the first one from my family.’”
Mike Prosser has been after Big Dave Tyson ever since. When a couple of opportunistic young car thieves come off badly after their crashing encounter with Tyson, Prosser is fired up yet again to catch this seemingly untouchable crim. But this time, he’s not the boss, no longer the Chief Superintendent.
“The uniformed officer was a fast-track promotion, some ten years younger than Mike Prosser, and had been swept in from another force when Prosser had been convicted of drink-driving. Taking the senior station officer from the uniformed branch was a way of mitigating Prosser’s pain at his demotion but it had not been easy for the new chief facing the silent hostility of the tightly-knit CID squad. Surprisingly, Mike Prosser had shown no resentment towards him, accepting his demotion as due punishment with almost masochistic enthusiasm.”
This is a complicated story that takes place in the UK and involves many characters who turn out to be connected to each other, either through family relations or past dealings. It also involves illegal activities with other countries.
The basic plot is getting Tyson, as the title says, but each time they look like getting close, Tyson foils them. He’s a murderous thug surrounded by equally charming men who do the dirty work while he and his former Playboy-centerfold wife, Francine, run their club. She’s clever and sexy while he’s all conniving and vicious.
But before we meet Francine, we meet a clever, sexy French lawyer named Dominique, who rides a Ducati and turns heads so fast, one guy drove into a post in the parking garage. That kind of head-turner. She joins the police team as a prosecutor. She provided an interesting twist, but I found myself skimming over her internal monologues and self-criticism.
Francine was a more interesting, central character, and she enters the story about the time Dominique mostly leaves it. She’s the brains of the club business and sticks to that, giving him alibis when he needs them.
“She had become an expert at shutting out the repercussions of her husband’s nature, what she didn’t know she didn’t guess.”
She knows how to use her ‘assets’ to her advantage (much as Dominique does), but later, her sister accuses her, and it hurts.
“’You only married him to get that club because you wanted to be the female Hugh Hefner. Now we all have to suffer because of your ego.’ It was a brutal awakening to the unspoken feelings within a family and it left Francine scarred.”
Tyson’s dialogue is written in thick dialect, hard to read. Here he’s talking to Francine.
“‘No. I didn’t notice that. Yeah, you could be right, girl. Ee always said ee didn’t want to know if ee didn’t ‘ave to. I’ll tell you wot, Fran, you find out ‘ow ee feels. Do wot you ‘ave to. Find out wot ee ‘as on us.’”
But I enjoyed some of the descriptive passages.
“The villa was in the hills above Marbella. They motored up the winding country road past other houses, softly pink in the evening light, their heavily tiled roofs blood-red amongst green blankets of foliage, with palms and tall pines rising above them like markers of a recent past.”
And there are plenty of thriller elements.
“The knife blade moved a little across her throat and although she felt no pain she could feel the blood quickly begin to trickle down her front and into her blouse. ‘You’ve got one more chance. I’ll find ‘im wiv or wivout you, dead or alive. It’s your call.’ he told her.”
As the plot became more convoluted and the relationships between the characters became more intertwined, I lost interest and skimmed. I enjoyed the plot and some of the characters and some of the writing.
What I didn’t enjoy were the errors that a good editor would have picked up. “Porterhouse stake” is one. It happens and we all do it. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve typed “won” instead of “one”. Just now I’ve typed “think” instead of “thing” when I was saying it’s a good thing I’m not a novelist!
Thanks to the author for making this available for free a day or so on Amazon so other readers and I could access it. It’s a few years old now, so I’m hopeful he’s got some fresh eyes available to proof his next works.
This could be the basis for a good, gritty mini-series coming out of the UK, I think.
“‘Is this your first fire victim, Chief Superintendent?’ the pathologist asked him. ‘No,’ he answered.‘But it’s the first one from my family.’”
Mike Prosser has been after Big Dave Tyson ever since. When a couple of opportunistic young car thieves come off badly after their crashing encounter with Tyson, Prosser is fired up yet again to catch this seemingly untouchable crim. But this time, he’s not the boss, no longer the Chief Superintendent.
“The uniformed officer was a fast-track promotion, some ten years younger than Mike Prosser, and had been swept in from another force when Prosser had been convicted of drink-driving. Taking the senior station officer from the uniformed branch was a way of mitigating Prosser’s pain at his demotion but it had not been easy for the new chief facing the silent hostility of the tightly-knit CID squad. Surprisingly, Mike Prosser had shown no resentment towards him, accepting his demotion as due punishment with almost masochistic enthusiasm.”
This is a complicated story that takes place in the UK and involves many characters who turn out to be connected to each other, either through family relations or past dealings. It also involves illegal activities with other countries.
The basic plot is getting Tyson, as the title says, but each time they look like getting close, Tyson foils them. He’s a murderous thug surrounded by equally charming men who do the dirty work while he and his former Playboy-centerfold wife, Francine, run their club. She’s clever and sexy while he’s all conniving and vicious.
But before we meet Francine, we meet a clever, sexy French lawyer named Dominique, who rides a Ducati and turns heads so fast, one guy drove into a post in the parking garage. That kind of head-turner. She joins the police team as a prosecutor. She provided an interesting twist, but I found myself skimming over her internal monologues and self-criticism.
Francine was a more interesting, central character, and she enters the story about the time Dominique mostly leaves it. She’s the brains of the club business and sticks to that, giving him alibis when he needs them.
“She had become an expert at shutting out the repercussions of her husband’s nature, what she didn’t know she didn’t guess.”
She knows how to use her ‘assets’ to her advantage (much as Dominique does), but later, her sister accuses her, and it hurts.
“’You only married him to get that club because you wanted to be the female Hugh Hefner. Now we all have to suffer because of your ego.’ It was a brutal awakening to the unspoken feelings within a family and it left Francine scarred.”
Tyson’s dialogue is written in thick dialect, hard to read. Here he’s talking to Francine.
“‘No. I didn’t notice that. Yeah, you could be right, girl. Ee always said ee didn’t want to know if ee didn’t ‘ave to. I’ll tell you wot, Fran, you find out ‘ow ee feels. Do wot you ‘ave to. Find out wot ee ‘as on us.’”
But I enjoyed some of the descriptive passages.
“The villa was in the hills above Marbella. They motored up the winding country road past other houses, softly pink in the evening light, their heavily tiled roofs blood-red amongst green blankets of foliage, with palms and tall pines rising above them like markers of a recent past.”
And there are plenty of thriller elements.
“The knife blade moved a little across her throat and although she felt no pain she could feel the blood quickly begin to trickle down her front and into her blouse. ‘You’ve got one more chance. I’ll find ‘im wiv or wivout you, dead or alive. It’s your call.’ he told her.”
As the plot became more convoluted and the relationships between the characters became more intertwined, I lost interest and skimmed. I enjoyed the plot and some of the characters and some of the writing.
What I didn’t enjoy were the errors that a good editor would have picked up. “Porterhouse stake” is one. It happens and we all do it. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve typed “won” instead of “one”. Just now I’ve typed “think” instead of “thing” when I was saying it’s a good thing I’m not a novelist!
Thanks to the author for making this available for free a day or so on Amazon so other readers and I could access it. It’s a few years old now, so I’m hopeful he’s got some fresh eyes available to proof his next works.
This could be the basis for a good, gritty mini-series coming out of the UK, I think.
July 29, 2024
3.5/5
I was apprehensive about reading Getting Tyson. The last time I read a GR friend’s self-published book, my honest review cost me the acquaintance. My fears were completely misplaced. It is a gripping page-turner that kept me constantly interested. It is an enjoyable debut that would make most authors proud.
In this police procedural DS Mike Prosser is obsessed with putting the titular kingpin behind bars because Tyson was connected with his daughter’s killing. A road rage incident gives Prosser renewed cause to go after his quarry. I have read so many thrillers which are marketed as gritty but the leads feel indestructible and the narrative leans heavily on coincidences. Davies trusts his readers and storytelling abilities and avoids excesses. He does not burden the story with scantily believable twists or uses forensic as a crutch. His plot is carried by old fashioned, determined police work. He makes every plot beat credible without slowing the pacing. He accomplishes this with a series of confident, intelligent decisions. For example, he is not afraid to sideline his protagonist and let the supporting cast shine. Prosser is a rule-breaking lone wolf but the story is not about a maverick cop, it is about a police department’s collective, coordinated effort to catch a criminal. Tyson speaks in a cockney accent. It is used just enough to build a menacing aura around the man without letting it get so pronounced that it distracts readers. My only nitpick is the smoking gun – the recording which can bring down Tyson did not seem as unimpeachable to me as it did to the cops. It is a conversation between two dead men, it might not hold up in court.
The characters are a mixed bag. Prosser is the quintessential workaholic cop whose need for revenge gets him into trouble. He is willing to sacrifice justice to get closure which rings true for a father who has lost his daughter. However he does not do enough to stand out in a field of crowded tortured crime protagonists. My favorite character was Tyson’s wife Francine. She is the silent enabler who does not want to know how depraved Tyson gets as long as the future of her family is secured. She slowly develops a conscience and has the best arc. French defense attorney Dominique Harcourt who wears body-hugging clothes and rides a slick bike tries too hard to be sexy and is the most clichéd character and did not work for me. Tyson’s defense attorney Marcus Swift seems too nice to be a gangster’s lawyer but his arc shows how Tyson is a corrupting influence and everyone around him suffers. Davies takes some writerly latitudes with Swift’s character and has him interested in amateur Shakespeare productions. He occasionally quotes the bard.
It might not be the best the genre has to offer but it is a shame quality work such as this was not picked up by a publisher. There are lots of big name authors whose long running series sell purely on name value. This is as good as anything Michael Connelly has written lately but it won’t sell a fraction as much as Bosch. It makes me wish readers were less loyal to their favorites once it was obvious their favorites were running on fumes, and branched out and gave new authors a chance.
I was apprehensive about reading Getting Tyson. The last time I read a GR friend’s self-published book, my honest review cost me the acquaintance. My fears were completely misplaced. It is a gripping page-turner that kept me constantly interested. It is an enjoyable debut that would make most authors proud.
In this police procedural DS Mike Prosser is obsessed with putting the titular kingpin behind bars because Tyson was connected with his daughter’s killing. A road rage incident gives Prosser renewed cause to go after his quarry. I have read so many thrillers which are marketed as gritty but the leads feel indestructible and the narrative leans heavily on coincidences. Davies trusts his readers and storytelling abilities and avoids excesses. He does not burden the story with scantily believable twists or uses forensic as a crutch. His plot is carried by old fashioned, determined police work. He makes every plot beat credible without slowing the pacing. He accomplishes this with a series of confident, intelligent decisions. For example, he is not afraid to sideline his protagonist and let the supporting cast shine. Prosser is a rule-breaking lone wolf but the story is not about a maverick cop, it is about a police department’s collective, coordinated effort to catch a criminal. Tyson speaks in a cockney accent. It is used just enough to build a menacing aura around the man without letting it get so pronounced that it distracts readers. My only nitpick is the smoking gun – the recording which can bring down Tyson did not seem as unimpeachable to me as it did to the cops. It is a conversation between two dead men, it might not hold up in court.
The characters are a mixed bag. Prosser is the quintessential workaholic cop whose need for revenge gets him into trouble. He is willing to sacrifice justice to get closure which rings true for a father who has lost his daughter. However he does not do enough to stand out in a field of crowded tortured crime protagonists. My favorite character was Tyson’s wife Francine. She is the silent enabler who does not want to know how depraved Tyson gets as long as the future of her family is secured. She slowly develops a conscience and has the best arc. French defense attorney Dominique Harcourt who wears body-hugging clothes and rides a slick bike tries too hard to be sexy and is the most clichéd character and did not work for me. Tyson’s defense attorney Marcus Swift seems too nice to be a gangster’s lawyer but his arc shows how Tyson is a corrupting influence and everyone around him suffers. Davies takes some writerly latitudes with Swift’s character and has him interested in amateur Shakespeare productions. He occasionally quotes the bard.
It might not be the best the genre has to offer but it is a shame quality work such as this was not picked up by a publisher. There are lots of big name authors whose long running series sell purely on name value. This is as good as anything Michael Connelly has written lately but it won’t sell a fraction as much as Bosch. It makes me wish readers were less loyal to their favorites once it was obvious their favorites were running on fumes, and branched out and gave new authors a chance.
July 28, 2018
In 'Getting Tyson', P.K. Davies has written a story with strongly defined characters. We are introduced to the main antagonist, Dave Tyson, early in the story. He is a cockney, and in the written dialogue the author, P.K. Davies, assignes Tyson the accent one would expect to hear a person speaking when born and brought up in the sound of Bow Bells. One soon gets to hate Tyson for his deviousness and cruelty. A wide variety of characters, some of whom we get to know well and others who step into the tale and then step back out, weave their way through 'Getting Tyson' .
The main protagonist, Detective Superintendent Mike Prosser, is always one step behind Tyson in this tale that takes us into the realms of an import deal to do with a processing industry that is not what it seems on the surface.
Prosser and his side-kick, Val Franks, have their work cut out to get the evasive Tyson convicted for his crimes.
Who wins out in the end, Tyson or Prosser? You will have to read the book to find out.
P.K. Davies has another book in the offing, 'The Girl Of Drovers' Hill'. It will be interesting to see how this book shapes up; it is an intriguing title. I am looking forward to reading a taster of P.K.'s next book.
The main protagonist, Detective Superintendent Mike Prosser, is always one step behind Tyson in this tale that takes us into the realms of an import deal to do with a processing industry that is not what it seems on the surface.
Prosser and his side-kick, Val Franks, have their work cut out to get the evasive Tyson convicted for his crimes.
Who wins out in the end, Tyson or Prosser? You will have to read the book to find out.
P.K. Davies has another book in the offing, 'The Girl Of Drovers' Hill'. It will be interesting to see how this book shapes up; it is an intriguing title. I am looking forward to reading a taster of P.K.'s next book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews