Tripper

by Ken McCoy

YORKSHIRE EVENING Review of Tripper Tripper is one of the best private eye stories I’ve read in a long time; it’s fast paced with a great cast of strong characters, a generous amount of wit and murder aplenty. It's The Real McCoy.Ron Crusher was dead and he never really knew why. Nor do you, to be fair. It pretty much remains a mystery throughout the book unless you’re sharp enough to pick up on any clue I might have carelessly left in there. Ostensibly, no one really has cause to push him off that high building, not even gang boss Milo Morell who often kills people just to watch them die. When Ron’s forced at gunpoint onto the parapet of the only multi-storey block in Unsworth he naturally thinks he’s simply being used to distract the cops while a criminal gang escapes. All he has to do is go along with it and do as he’s told. So it comes as a bit of a shock when he finds himself a split second away from splattering across the pavement without ever knowing why. All Ron knows is that he’s falling to his death on the very day his wife has gone to Blackpool. There are so many things Ron doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that Derek Fleming stepped in front of a heavy lorry on Christmas Eve 1980 in a state of desolation caused by John Lennon’s murder earlier that month. He doesn’t know what knock-on effect this will have on so many lives, eventually leading up to his own death. In fact he doesn’t know who Derek Fleming is. However, you will know who he is, and why he eventually causes Ron’s death but (and I apologise for this) not until the book is almost at an end. Unless, of course, you’re some sort of mystery solving genius.Meanwhile, Sam Carew is hired to go to Barbados to discover if cruise ship crooner Joey Gladstone is cheating on his wife back home in Unsworth. When he arrives in Bridgetown where the Caribbean Rose is docked it’s pure coincidence that Ron Crusher’s brother is on that very ship and that he’s heard all about Sam’s exploits as Unsworth’s one and only private eye. Chased by the ship’s security guards, Sam finds it necessary to jump ship into the harbour, which is an ill-advised move for a non-swimmer, but he survives this and then narrowly avoids being tricked into marriage by Francine le Bon, a port security guard who has the power to have him locked up for illegally boarding a ship. Sam decides that checking on errant husbands isn’t what he signed on for when he became a private detective. Which is why he’s drawn into the investigation of Ron Crusher’s murder which will take him back to the murky depths of Unsworth’s criminal underworld. And this is where the story begins.

288 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Fruitbat · Rating 1 out of 5]

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