Panicking Ralph (Harpur & Iles) Book

Penzler Pick, June 2001: The irony-laced police procedurals of British writer Bill James are as much an acquired taste as a glass of Guinness stout--and equally inimitable. In such novels as The Lolita Man, Eton Crop, and Kill Me, the dueling coppers Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur and his superior, Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Isles, keep a wary eye on one another, never sure which way the winds of bloody-mindedness are blowing.

In Panicking Ralph, the titular Ralph Ember is the owner of a disreputable private drinking club called The Monty. Full or not, it's a home-away-from-home for shady dealmakers and the thugs who congregate in their wake. Ralph tries "to keep The Monty a cheery place, despite occasional blood-soaked affrays and harsh tragedies."

His nickname derives from his well-known habit of getting his knickers in a twist whenever the going starts to get rough. Or, as Harpur puts it as he and his colleagues debate what the local villains might be up to, "Ember oscillates between cold sweats and fierce ambition and even guts."

In the opening pages, as Ralph's married mistress is murdered before his eyes during an assignation on the beach, we see him run much, much faster than she can: "Fleetness when it mattered was among his flairs." Later on, when he returns to collect Christine's body, he tries not to think about his position as avenger, that it will now be "impossible to dodge the role in the way some might claim he had dodged this afternoon." After all, it had been he they were after all along--her murder was a mistake.

Had she never strayed from the loving embrace of her husband, a purveyor of pet care products, her unseeing eyes would not now be caked with mud and Ralph would not be desperately trying to figure out how to take proper action without tipping his hand or incriminating himself. Always, Harpur and Iles are in the background, circling the territory and making sure that what goes down in their jurisdiction is never too much of a surprise. Like Ian Rankin, James understands how the line between those who keep the law and those who flout it is so often blurred. --Otto Penzler