Protection (Harpur & Iles S.)

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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.)

As for no department's being willing to tolerate an Iles for long, James made this interesting declaration in an interview I did with himLAssistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles (Hywel Bennett) is an abrasive, cynical copper who has eyes on the top job. By the way, I see from your profile that you liked The Ice Harvest. I've posted some comments about Scott Phillips here. May 09, 2008 Anonymous said... 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? Hywel Bennett, shorn of his baby face and much puffier due to his drinking dominates. There is no subtlety in his character.

I jumped on the Bill James bandwagon five or six years ago, when I first started reading crime fiction. I mean, I remember where I was and what I was doing the first time someone handed me one of his novels. It is a mystery to me, too, why he is not better known. Is he too literary for crime-fiction circles and too crime-fiction for literary circles? Most fiction has sex. It's sometimes disguised as romance or love interest. Where would Madame Bovary be without it, or The End of the Affair, or Romeo and Juliet or Anna Karenina or Mills and Boon or Lady Chatterley or Anthony Powell? 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. OK, maybe just a bit mischievous. But doing so felt better than hedging and fudging. I have read a number of the other authors you suggested, and all merit consideration in any discussion of prose style among crime writers, perhaps Hill especially. But being deliberately provocative can be fun. The second book in Harpur & Iles series takes place shortly after the series debut novel, and we find Colin Harpur and his team in the small fictional town of England collecting leads after the 5th rape and the killing of a 14-year-old girl in the last couple of months.

Ultimately I suspect Harpur and Iles was green lit as a production to rival S4C and Channel 5's successful, dour Welsh 'tec thriller A Mind to Kill and to compliment the BBC's other chalk and cheese cops Dalziel and Pascoe. The fact that both of these were infinitely better than this offering ensured it was given a hasty demise and not a second thought. You're not the first reader to invoke revenge tragedies in discussing James, though you are the first I've seen to throw Basil Fawlty into the mix. I suspect James would be delighted.