Kingdom Gone Book

In his last outing The Reluctant Investigator, Lean's Manchester private eye, Dave Cunane, was framed as a serial killer, landed with a dodgy paternity suit and nearly dissected and burned alive. He starts the new book in retirement, teaching management at a local university; his card turns up in the hand of a murdered politician and he finds himself on the wrong side of an influential charismatic cult. Cunane is not so much an investigator as an attitude, waiting for someone to rub him up the wrong way; this is pretty much standard Chandlerian territory with enough commonsense modernity to it to go down smooth. What is perhaps most especially interesting about this series is the extent to which the feud between Cunane and the local police force is largely a matter of disappointed love; his retired father was Chief Superintendent and his disciples, like the devious Sinclair, have never understood why his son did not follow in his footsteps. Lean's novels have laddish wit going for them, but also a preparedness to follow through savagely on the logic of a situation; like its predecessor, this never abandons a light touch, but has moments of imaginative grimness. --Roz KaveneyRead More