A Harpur & Iles Mystery
24 primary works • 28 total works
Book 1
Nominated for England's Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award in 1986, You'd Better Believe It introduced Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur to reader in England and the United States. Harpur's domain is a small seaport city south of London. It's not unusual for the big-town criminals to consider such a spot as easy prey. At such times a policeman must rely keenly upon his colleagues, to be sure, and also upon his retinue of narks (tipsters). This time it's a Lloyd's Bank branch that's the target. When the heist is postponed, a policeman is killed. One nark, then another, is murdered. As Harpur becomes driven to his limit, he must bypass regulations and settle things once and for all with a vicious crook named Holly. But not necessarily on his own terms.
Book 2
Five teenage girls have been raped and murdered, and the criminal is still at large. Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur, assigned to the case, is a tough hunter, but so is "the Lolita man," watching the schoolyards. Now it looks as if the daughter of Harpur's friend may be the latest victim. Virtually obsessed with the urgency of the matter, and hampered by the bitter police rivalry that is jeopardizing the case, Harpur decides to go it alone.
Book 3
First time in U.S. paperback, the third in Bill James's "standout," "witty," "well above the ordinary" series (starred reviews, Publishers Weekly, Booklist). When Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur places young policeman Ray Street undercover in a vicious drug gang, the entire department knows the risks. If Street is found out, he will take his place in "the halo parade." Then the killing of a fellow officer will have to be avenged, by whatever means . . .
Book 5
Sarah Iles' latest young lover, Ian Aston, and the seedy gangland club he frequents both possess the intense attraction of the forbidden. When one night at the Monty they witness a fatal knifing, they unwittingly learn far too much for their own good of a deadly plot that could, if successfully executed, rearrange the city's criminal power structure. Immediately, the unfaithful wife and petty criminal become targets of both police and underworld observation. In "Come Clean" Bill James once again explores that no-man's-land of law enforcement, where human concern and naked expediency stand perennially at odds with each other.
Book 6
Ron "Planner" Preston has enjoyed a long criminal career out of jail. Caution, if anything, has been the key to his success. So a payroll van with a predictable route and minimal guard looks like a quick easy take. When the truck's schedule is abruptly changed and its guard doubled, however, Preston much either abandon the plan altogether or take on some young and risky new recruits, ones who may consider his habitual wariness a sign of the timidity of old age.Harpur and his boss, Assistant Chief Constable Iles, are accustomed to keeping an eye on men like Preston, not so difficult a task in a milieu where cops and criminals meet on many levels: professional, familial, social. Therefore, they are quick to take notice of increased activity surrounding "Planner" on the part of his family and associates. But how are these moves to be interpreted? And where is the line between certainty and conjecture to be drawn? As one criminal aptly observes, "Chance matters."
Book 9
At nineteen years old, Colin Harpur's girlfriend Denise Prior knows little about criminals, and even less about the law. When Denise drifts into the social circle of Harpur's number-one informant Jack Lamb, and one of the criminals is shot to death during a robbery, Denise's life is suddenly in danger and Harpur must solve a new crime-before it happens.
Book 10
Megan Harpur took the train back from London to tell her husband she was leaving him for another man. By the time Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur discovered her in the station parking lot in the early hours of the morning, there was nothing anyone could do. Who had committed this savage killing? What did Megan's lover's nervous, secret activities have to do with it? The crime confronts Harpur with the most unnerving case of his career.
"Bill James's Harpur and Iles books are deliciously unsavoury: a brilliant combination of almost Jacobean savagery and sexual betrayal with a tart comedy of contemporary manners. A stylised world that is several moves from reality, and about as real as you can get." — John Harvey, "The Crime Writer's Crime Writer," Guardian "There is nothing else quite like this series of police procedurals. James is concerned with the dilemmas and difficulties of policing Britain's inner cities, and he addresses these in hard-edged narratives that leave readers gasping and flinching, praying the people in these stories never come to live in their streets....It's all delivered in a ferociously poetic voice that is uniquely Bill James." — The Times [London], "100 Masters of Crime"; "James makes his grimmest, most acid sortie yet into the tangled domestic and working lives of his ferocious fuzz."—John Coleman, Sunday Times [London]
"Bill James's Harpur and Iles books are deliciously unsavoury: a brilliant combination of almost Jacobean savagery and sexual betrayal with a tart comedy of contemporary manners. A stylised world that is several moves from reality, and about as real as you can get." — John Harvey, "The Crime Writer's Crime Writer," Guardian "There is nothing else quite like this series of police procedurals. James is concerned with the dilemmas and difficulties of policing Britain's inner cities, and he addresses these in hard-edged narratives that leave readers gasping and flinching, praying the people in these stories never come to live in their streets....It's all delivered in a ferociously poetic voice that is uniquely Bill James." — The Times [London], "100 Masters of Crime"; "James makes his grimmest, most acid sortie yet into the tangled domestic and working lives of his ferocious fuzz."—John Coleman, Sunday Times [London]
Book 12
"The detective is dead" because the old process of justice doesn't work any more. No one, including Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur, would testify at the trial; Harpur refused to name his informant. The three murderers who were being tried are part of a savage underworld struggle for the lucrative domain of the late drug baron Kenward Knapp. The story opens as the three assemble at Ralph Embers's seedy club "The Monty" to celebrate their acquittal. The key player behind the scenes is ambitious drug dealer Keith Vine, now an informant for Harpur. Vine's partners have been murdered and his life is in danger. Harpur wants to send him (and his smart, beautiful, pregnant girlfriend, Becky) safely abroad, while the coldly plotting ACC Desmond Iles wants to keep him here, to serve as bait for the killers. Part pawn, part murderous player himself, reaching hungrily for the Knapp riches, Vine disappears into a labyrinth of fear and greed, twisting through schemes and alliances that very likely will destroy him.
Book 13
A girl is shot down, caught in the crossfire between two rival drug gangs. For Chief Constable Lane there is only one option - infiltrate the gangs and rid his patch of this menace. Meanwhile, DCS Harpur, investigating Mandy's death, discovers that the bullets were not fired by the warring gangs.
Book 18
Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur and his brilliant, amoral superior ACC Desmond Iles face a dilemma that's both political and personal when they suspect a police officer of taking bribes from underworld criminals Panicking Ralph Ember and Top Banana Mansel Shale. Is Nivette doing some unauthorized undercover work—as Harpur himself often does—or is he really bent? It's a question of intense interest not only to Harpur and Iles but also to Ember and Shale, and searching for the answer entails several break-ins to Nivette's house to look for, take, or plant the evidence.
Meanwhile, the body of a pusher, Victor Goussard ("Slow Victor"), is found trussed up on a deserted boat in the city harbor—and then it disappears. His lover frantically, unwisely, starts to ask questions down at the docks; a snoopy television reporter sees a breaking story; and Ember, terrified of exposure, plots the murder of a man who knows too much. Harpur is fast on the trail to make the connections and prevent another crime, but it's a race against time—and treachery.
Meanwhile, the body of a pusher, Victor Goussard ("Slow Victor"), is found trussed up on a deserted boat in the city harbor—and then it disappears. His lover frantically, unwisely, starts to ask questions down at the docks; a snoopy television reporter sees a breaking story; and Ember, terrified of exposure, plots the murder of a man who knows too much. Harpur is fast on the trail to make the connections and prevent another crime, but it's a race against time—and treachery.
Book 19
Big drug dealer Ralph Ember stumbles on a ghastly surprise when he and sidekick Beau Derek arrive at the house of yachtsman Barney Coss, his bulk supplier: Barney and his two women have been savagely murdered—and the murderers, three drug rivals from London, are still in the house. Beau dies quickly at their hands; they let Ralph go—for the moment—but he's a marked man because of what he's seen. When Melanie, Beau's alluring, ruthless girlfriend, learns what has happened, she is bent on revenge and wants Ralph as her partner—all the way. Bill James's latest Harpur & Iles police procedural ratchets up the tension as the cops (the brilliant Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur and his ungovernable, half-cracked superior, Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles) fight the drug barons for control of the city. As a body washes up, and one of the London creeps meets a violent end, the wily Ralph finds himself starting a new, very risky career—and Harpur sorts out what's going on just in time.
Book 20
With the rumored transfer of Chief of Police Mark Lane, London's competitive drug lords are on edge. In the past, Desmond Iles has managed to maintain the peace on the streets in an old-fashioned system of give a little, take a little. But with a dangerous mix of greed and fear, the looming threat of a stricter police force, and three sudden deaths, all sides are preparing themselves for a full-scale battle of the ugliest kind. A deliciously witty addition to a classic series, The Girl with the Long Back heightens the urgency and pace of the tantalizing London underworld in which cops and criminals, and all of their clever asides, are sketched in fantastic detail.
Book 21
The twenty-first novel in the savagely comic and expertly choreographed Harpur and Iles series.
Book 22
A large, carefully plotted "cash-in-transit" raid goes hopelessly awry when armed policemen intervene to seize the perpetrators. Relatives and friends of the incarcerated are convinced that informationthe date, the timewas leaked by the only man to escape before his arrest. Deputy Constable Colin Harpur and Assistant Constable Desmond Iles are delegated the job of hiding and protecting the informant and his family.
Book 23
For years Panicking Ralph Ember and Mansel Shale have run profitable drugs empires in peaceful cooperation with each other, and ACC Iles will blind-eye their trade as long as it keeps violence off the streets. But this happy arrangement is threatened by foreign dealers moving in and offering punters not just drugs, but exploited girls from Eastern Europe. And bloody gang warfare threatens as a scrabble for territory ensues.
Book 24
There’s intrigue right from the start of this new entry in Bill James’s Harpur and Iles series: A houseful of paintings is stolen and the body of a finely dressed stranger is discovered. Villainous drug dealers fight for dominance on Constable Iles and Detective Harpur’s turf. While the kingpins maneuver and scheme, Harpur is helped-or hindered?-by his very persistent daughters and by Iles’s irregular and perhaps illicit methods. In this fast-paced thriller, there’s no telling who will catch the next bullet.
Book 25
Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles’s absence from a police undercover conference sets the stage for the moral and practical dilemmas faced by one of his colleagues, ACC Esther Davidson, as she works to bring down the largest gang operating in her sector. The role of undercover agents—or “out-located” officers—is brought into sharp focus as James masterfully unfolds the story of Davidson’s decision to infiltrate the gang against the events of the resulting court case.
Book 26
For years drug baron Ralph Ember has run his crooked enterprises peacefully enough alongside those of his rival, Mansel Shale. Their empires have been tolerated by Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles as a way of keeping violence off the streets. But are things changing? Karl Marx’s bleak theory that all capitalists—including drug tycoons—lust for monopoly seems to be coming true. Do Ember and Shale long for sole control of the trade and the profits? Ember fears that Shale now wants to kill him and take over his firm. Shale, on the other hand, is about to get remarried and—believing in keeping his (so-called) friends close and his enemies closer—has asked Ember to be his best man. Will Ember be appallingly exposed as he stands with Shale at the altar? Or will Shale? Ember wonders whether he should act first to protect himself; one of his people has already been gunned down and the killer has not yet been caught. Iles and Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur have picked up hints of this acutely dangerous shift in the Ember-Shale relationship and must urgently try to head off the inevitable carnage.
Book 28
Book 29
