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Harpur & Iles #21
Easy Streets
"A brilliant combination of almost Jacobean savagery and sexual betrayal with a tart comedy of contemporary manners." ―John Harvey, The Guardian. For years Colin Harpur's dubious boss, Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles, ran a questionable but practical arrangement with Mansel Shale and Panicking Ralph Ember, owner of the Monty Iles would protect their businesses if they ensured peace on the streets. But the arrangement fails when violence erupts.
After a small-time criminal's house is firebombed, leaving the owner and his daughter dead, mistrust and uncertainty pervade the formerly well-managed more drug dealers emerge and competition grows. With the failure of a once mutually beneficial relationship between cops and criminals, a battle for survival ensues. Bill James is a pointripe with humor, fast dialogue, and incisive wit, he offers entrance into the shocking and fascinating underbelly of a city and its inherent mysteries.
After a small-time criminal's house is firebombed, leaving the owner and his daughter dead, mistrust and uncertainty pervade the formerly well-managed more drug dealers emerge and competition grows. With the failure of a once mutually beneficial relationship between cops and criminals, a battle for survival ensues. Bill James is a pointripe with humor, fast dialogue, and incisive wit, he offers entrance into the shocking and fascinating underbelly of a city and its inherent mysteries.
- GenresMystery
192 pages, Paperback
First published October 28, 2004
24 people want to read
About the author
Bill James
61 books26 followersBill 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)
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)
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 8, 2017
Harpur and Iles are great characters and their counterparts on the criminal side are just as interesting which is why I always enjoy the books in this series even though nothing much ever happens plot wise.
April 25, 2011
The cover of this book calls it "A Harpur & Iles Mystery", which must be one of the most remarkable pieces of copywriting idiocy ever to appear. It is, for a start, not a mystery.
What is this book exactly? It's a crime novel, and it has cops in it called Harpur and Iles. But it's not in any real sense a mimetic novel. Instead, it's a sort of extraordinarily mannered semi-comedy of manners, semi-Jacobean tragedy. In an unnamed British city, the controllers of the drug trade are trying to adapt to the fact that the street price of their merchandise is plummeting dues to the easing of governmental attitudes toward dope. So they jostle for supremacy in an attempt to restructure the marketplace, killing each other in the process. And the cops seem complicit in all this. And, toward the end of the book, I didn't care in the slightest what happened so long as I got to page 191 and could read something else instead.
Bill James is a much-loved writer -- there are quotes all over the cover from hifalutin critics -- but not one for me. I have a feeling that, many years ago, I was deceived by the strapline into reading a different "Harpur & Iles Mystery" and spent much of the relevant time fighting a potent urge to throw it at the wall. A I imply, different readers may well have a completely different take on this book than I did.
What is this book exactly? It's a crime novel, and it has cops in it called Harpur and Iles. But it's not in any real sense a mimetic novel. Instead, it's a sort of extraordinarily mannered semi-comedy of manners, semi-Jacobean tragedy. In an unnamed British city, the controllers of the drug trade are trying to adapt to the fact that the street price of their merchandise is plummeting dues to the easing of governmental attitudes toward dope. So they jostle for supremacy in an attempt to restructure the marketplace, killing each other in the process. And the cops seem complicit in all this. And, toward the end of the book, I didn't care in the slightest what happened so long as I got to page 191 and could read something else instead.
Bill James is a much-loved writer -- there are quotes all over the cover from hifalutin critics -- but not one for me. I have a feeling that, many years ago, I was deceived by the strapline into reading a different "Harpur & Iles Mystery" and spent much of the relevant time fighting a potent urge to throw it at the wall. A I imply, different readers may well have a completely different take on this book than I did.
June 3, 2015
If I want to read this sort of morally ambiguous cops and robbers scenario, I'll go back to Dalziel and Pascoe.
I could see, as I went on, why people enjoy it. It's like a train wreck, reading Isles. Honestly, he's terrible, but in an entertaining way. BUT, the pages and pages from the bad guys' point of view, written in vernacular, were hard for me to get through, and in the end I think - yeah, I'm pretty sure nothing actually seemed to have happened. People got killed... but I have no idea what had changed for the main characters, really.
It was a quick read, but not my cup of tea.
I could see, as I went on, why people enjoy it. It's like a train wreck, reading Isles. Honestly, he's terrible, but in an entertaining way. BUT, the pages and pages from the bad guys' point of view, written in vernacular, were hard for me to get through, and in the end I think - yeah, I'm pretty sure nothing actually seemed to have happened. People got killed... but I have no idea what had changed for the main characters, really.
It was a quick read, but not my cup of tea.
March 9, 2014
what a great story these guys are crazy great
October 21, 2020
I hadn't read Bill James for a while and had forgotten how good, and unique, he can be. I've been a fan of the Harpur and Iles series ever since I picked up Roses, Roses following a decent review in The Times, and have read many of them since. The recurring characters have become mainstays of the fictional landscape in my head, although I doubt if many would recognise "Panicking Ralph" to be up there with King Lear in the hallowed Halls of Literature. But he is up there in mine, one of the tragic, flawed personas, driven by personal demons that run deep, as unfathomable as the psychopathy of Iles or pragmatism of Harpur. But while Shakespeare's forte was tragedy, Bill James delivers way ahead on the comedy front, especially in the exchanges between the two policemen as they bicker like an unhappily married couple stuck in the checkout queue in Sainsbury's (Iles wouldn't be seen dead in Asda). It's a unique brew that I can't compare to any other writer, the creation of a set of characters who are at once absurd, surreal, insane and believable. In a world of Lee Childs, Ian Rankins, Harlan Cobans, Stephen Kings, Colin Dexters and so on, it takes a vision to do your own thing at the expense of everything else, but Bill James manages it with every book in this series. He's the indie band that nobody you know has heard of, and is all the better for it.
November 16, 2023
This is the twenty fourth novel which I have read in this long running series though for some reason it has been ten years since I last read one. The author died earlier this year (2023) so I have been trying to read all the books I have missed.
The series deals with police and criminals and I suppose became a little formulaic over the years but I do like the black humour. This was first published in 2004. Assistant Chief Constable Iles is a monstrous creation but Detective Chief Superintendent Harpur is quite likeable for all his faults. There is not a lot of action as most of the book is people talking but there are certainly lots of people killed.
The series deals with police and criminals and I suppose became a little formulaic over the years but I do like the black humour. This was first published in 2004. Assistant Chief Constable Iles is a monstrous creation but Detective Chief Superintendent Harpur is quite likeable for all his faults. There is not a lot of action as most of the book is people talking but there are certainly lots of people killed.
December 9, 2021
This is my first book of Bill James and it, at best, did entertain me. It had humor, right amount of description and point of view given in each characters. But the one thing I didn't get was what this story was about. Cause it ended in them just having a "terrible feeling" of this guy and yeah basically killed him for that. And the story was rapped up with only 3 pages and I was completely not satisfied. I will give it a 3 stars for the entertainment it gave me and the things I realized and learned from this book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 6, 2023
Intriguing plot and witty, often dour prose. The dialogue is worthy of George V. Higgins.
July 19, 2015
Easy Streets is the twenty first tale in the Harpur and Iles series. It’s the first one I’ve read and I’m not sure it was the ideal introduction. The start felt like joining an on-going conversation and it took a little time to work my way into the story. In fact, the whole tale felt like an episode of a long running television show; more a snapshot into a much longer narrative than a fully-formed, self-contained story. The tale is told from a handful of perspectives: that of the shady, seedy cops, Iles and Harpur, and the upwardly mobile criminals, Mansel Shale and Panicky Ralph Ember. Where it excels is with respect to the dialogue in which characters can often be talking past one another as they ignore what the other has to say, and it is often darkly comic. Overall, however, whilst interesting, it lacked a strong hook that would shift it from crime soap opera to something more substantial.
October 23, 2009
Not quite the crackle of other Harpur & Iles selections. I love how the style changes depending upon the character - Ralph, Mansel, Harpur, Iles. Harpur's daughters didn't play as large a role here and Denise was nearly non-existent. James seems to be struggling with where to take the series without the presence of ex-chief Lane.
December 2, 2008
very good
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews