Bill James

In Good Hands

A Harpur & Iles Mystery

"An unconventional and spicy tour de force...James is terrific."—Frances Fyfield

Two crooks involved in the drug trade have been murdered, and the bizarre circumstances of their deaths mirror two previous, unsolved killings that many suspect were carried out by ACC Desmond Iles in revenge for a cop's murder. Now an official inquiry looms, and Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur is caught between the brilliant, savage Iles and the grandly principled Chief Constable Mark Lane—whom Iles is trying to destroy.

In the drug underworld, fear and suspicion grip the chief players as they plot to get their hands on a fortune and try to learn who is responsible for these latest murders: who benefits, who is planning what next move, who is secretly in league with whom? As Iles fights off the inquiry closing in on him, and Harpur keeps barely ahead of the catastrophe he sees coming, sudden violence claims more lives on both sides of the line.

"There is not a nuance of the police-criminal interface that James does not convey effortlessly and with total conviction."—Marcel Berlins, The Times [London]

Bill James has been called "the Elmore Leonard of Britain's underworld" (Kirkus Reviews) and has been named a "Master of Crime" in a mystery roundup by the London Sunday Times, which said, "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." In addition to the Harpur and Iles series, James is the author of other mystery series and a book on Anthony Powell. He lives in Wales.

More books by Bill James

Originally published in 1994
2002 / paperback / ISBN 0-393-32245-9
2000 / hardcover / ISBN 0-393-05005-X
5" x 7" / 224 pages / Mystery