Protection (Harpur & Iles S.)

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The first few books in the series are dubbed A Detective Colin Harpur novel, but later books are designated A Harpur & Iles Mystery. This is a seedy grimy thriller with many unlikeable characters. Even Harpur is difficult to root for, even his own wife distrusts him. Hywel Bennett, shorn of his baby face and much puffier due to his drinking dominates. There is no subtlety in his character. If you knew how to look, a couple of deaths from the past showed now and then in Iles' face."That's from In Good Hands, and it's haunting and beautiful. James can also be laugh-out-loud funny while remaining just as haunting, as in the opening paragraph from The Detective is Dead: Peter, you've persuaded me! Books 7 to 16 are now on the tbr list. May 09, 2008 Peter Rozovsky said...

Writer: Don Shaw / Novels: Bill James / Producer: Jane Dauncey / Executive Producer: Jen Samson / Director: Jim Hill I'm really surprised that James isn't better known. The Harpur and Iles books (at least the four or so that I've read) are so good - and yes, James is one hell of a stylist. he's the Welsh Ken Bruen. May 09, 2008 Peter Rozovsky said... It's never too late to talk about Bill James. And I like your description of Harpur & Iles' universe. It's like are own, but in a twisted version. Patti Abbott frets over Forgotten Books. "I'm worried great books of the recent past are sliding out of print and out of our consciousness," she writes, and she asks other bloggers to help out by retrieving a book from the ranks of the forgotten. I like her idea so much that I'm suggesting a whole series: Bill James' Harpur & Iles novels. There is something in what you say. Commentators often invoke drama when talking about Bill James, and I find some of his best books delightfully theatrical. The similarity of speaking styles may contribute to that effect, as if the characters are speaking lines. I like the effect, and it might be a worthwhile experiment to keep your comment in mind as I reread one of the books. Thanks very much for a thought-provoking comment. March 03, 2010 jwarthen said...Given the vast number of mystery novels published each year, the idea that someone is killing off crime writers has a certain appeal - we could do with a little winnowing. That's the central premise of Val McDermid's taut new thriller Killing The Shadows, in which academic psychologist and geographical profiler Professor Fiona Cameron hunts down a serial killer working his way through a death list of mystery writers. The killer is targeting those crime writers who have turned psychological profilers into heroes. What makes him especially dangerous is the fact that his methods shatter all conventional views on the way serial killers operate. Cameron's search is given added urgency because her lover, Kit Martin, is a crime writer - and his name is on the list.

You’d Better Believe It the first book in a series of police procedural series introduces the reader to DCI Colin Harpur. His area of operation is a small city located south of London, and it is not unusual for the most wanted criminals to consider such a small town as an easy target. What I was less keen on: the pace is slow and Low Pastures is really a repeat of earlier books in the series, which has not progressed in recent years.Dominating all, however, is the relationship between DCS Colin Harpur and ACC Desmond Iles. Harpur and Iles are trapped in a hellish relationship of need and hatred. Each needs the other's skills to work effectively against the crooks. But Iles hates Harpur for having had an affair with his wife; Harpur is trying to keep Iles away from his underage daughter. And Harpur tries to shore up his Chief Constable, who is recovering from a breakdown, against Iles's constant undermining and baiting. And setting, as she does, her fictional mystery writers in the real world of UK crime writing, with its Crime Writers' Association and its Dagger Awards, paradoxically makes the novel less realistic. Even so, taken on its own terms, Killing The Shadows is an absorbing read, an entertaining showcase for McDermid's abundant talents. McDermid not quite at her peak is still head and shoulders above pretty much all of the competition. Several books have been optioned for possible film: that is, people pay a fairly minor amount to have the rights of the books for, say, a year while they try to set up finance etc. I think Halo Parade (number 3 in the series) is at present under option. There were also approaches for Split and Astride a Grave. BBC 1 televised Protection (incidentally, setting it in and around Cardiff, since it was BBC Wales who made it for the network). I don't know that I'm an especially 'visual' writer but some of the characters are reasonably strong and make decent acting parts although, as we've said, none of them are through-and-through virtuous or even entirely likeable, so James Stewart wouldn't have been cast. Also I tried to understand the psyche of a born second-in-command — someone who had a big job, but not the biggest. Iles will never make it to chief constable. What kind of personality does this produce? Answer: not eternally sweet; sometimes manic." June 06, 2011 Paula A Treichler said... Your comment about oneness of style with content shall likely spark further comment from me. May 09, 2008 Steve Allan said...

His novel Whose Little Girl are You, written under the "David Craig" pseudonym, was filmed as The Squeeze, 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. Before the success of your Harpur and Iles series you wrote numerous books, some of them non-crime - how do you view those early works now? Bill James is a former journalist who worked for the Western Mail and South Wales Echo, The Daily Mirror and the Sunday Times. He is the author of the Harpur and Iles crime series, which are published all over the world. Protection, the fourth in the series, was televised by BBC 1 as Harpur and Iles, starring Hywel Bennett. Hollywood is currently negotiating for Halo Parade, number three. Since The Mermaids Singing, McDermid's work has just got better and better, the pinnacle being last year's A Place of Execution - a tremendous piece of fiction, complex and haunting. Killing The Shadows, good as it is, isn't in that class. McDermid's books are always frighteningly convincing, but Killing The Shadows doesn't quite convince in the same way, I think because there is something too 'fictional' about the central conceit of somebody targeting crime writers. 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".In his first book, Bill James applied the same technique of dropping the reader in the midst of an investigation, and it’s a great change of pace for many authors who love to build up everything right from the beginning.

This blog is a proud winner of the 2009 Spinetingler Award for special services to the industry and its blogkeeper a proud former guest on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here on Earth. In civilian life I'm a copy editor in Philadelphia. When not reading crime fiction, I like to read history. When doing neither, I like to travel. When doing none of the above, I like listening to music or playing it, the latter rarely and badly. As for no department's being willing to tolerate an Iles for long, James made this interesting declaration in an interview I did with himL When the heist is finally pulled off, halfway through the novel, Colin ambush doesn’t work out as expected. Driven by anger, guilt, and fear, hunting down the killer becomes a personal affair for Colin. Were you having an impish moment when you wrote that last sentence, Peter? May 09, 2008 pattinase (abbott) said...I'm gratified. I remember the afternoon when I was sitting in a secondhand bookshop, and the laconic owner handed me a copy of Roses, Roses (tenth in the series) and said, "Here. You might like this." (Or was he phlegmatic? Perhaps he was laconic on his mother's side, phlegmatic on his father's.) What I particularly liked: Ralph Embers’ pretentiousness and his belief in his idealised self image is hilarious, and Harpur’s precocious, too old for their ages, teenage daughters are always a delight.