Protection (Harpur & Iles S.)

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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. The first book in the lengthy Harpur and Iles series is a beautiful introduction to the dark world of Colin Harpur, a DCS and a rising star in the police department in his mid-30. Colin spends most of his time hunting down criminal elements in the small southern town. 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. Your comment about oneness of style with content shall likely spark further comment from me. May 09, 2008 Steve Allan said...

What Colin doesn’t expect is that one of his juniors is going to go missing- the same cop who wife Colin is having some bit of adultery. Everything else gets complicated for Colin when tipsters get murders as it appears that the gang is getting rid of the loose ends before they can finally stage their major heist. 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. Iles has internal affairs sniffing about. As well as an up and coming detective having an affair with his wife. 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".

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? I don't read much crime, for fear of aping someone else's tone of voice without knowing it. I do remain bowled over by The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by the late George V Higgins, a stupendous US novel (and Mitchum film) which can make that most despised of creatures - a grass - sympathetic.

Patti, I especially recommend books seven ( Astride a Grave) through sixteen ( Eton Crop). The preceding books are good, but James really finds his themes in the seventh. May 09, 2008 Philip Amos said... In 1976 you wrote a book on the novels of Anthony Powell - it has even been suggested that the Harpur and Iles series is a kind of inverted A Dance to the Music of Time. Has Powell influenced your approach to series writing? 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.

Bill James is a veteran of the British crime writing scene and Low Pastures (Severn House, 27 January 2022) is the 36th entry in his quirky, long running series about Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur and his unpredictable boss, Assistant Chief Constable Iles. 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.

The first few books in the series are dubbed A Detective Colin Harpur novel, but later books are designated A Harpur & Iles Mystery. 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. Detective Superintendent Colin Harpur (Aneirin Hughes) has to put up with Iles dodgy ways and he just wants to do his job by the book.

I write about organised crime, not single murders. I didn't think organised crime would be credible in Wales. We don't have cities like Glasgow, Manchester, London where large scale criminal operations happen. This is good from the point of view of living here; not so good from the crime fiction point of view. But I thought that once the Bay got going, with the huge sums of money involved, then organised crime became a possibility. So, I started the Brade and Jenkins books. Whereas Harpur and Iles are in a nowhere city, Brade and Jenkins are very Cardiff. I have another Cardiff book coming out in January, 2005, with a girl detective leading. It's called Hear Me Talking To You, and appears under my David Craig pen name. Brade and Jenkins get a mention in this one, but that's about all. So, if Wales has been neglected for crime, i'm working on it at the Cardiff end. 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...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. 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?