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'Urban noir has found a 21st century champion in hot new writer Adam Baron, and his street smart, brutal and unfeasibly attractive hero...An unmissable series.' Shine Magazine; 'A British Dennis Lehane' Time Out; 'Baron is a writer to watch. Sunday Telegraph
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Product Description
A killer harbours a chilling vendetta that will send Billy Rucker's world spinning out of control . . .
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the fourth in Baron's series starring ex-policeman turned PI Billy Rucker (following Shut Eye, Hold Back the Night, and Superjack), but the first I've read. I'm a big fan of the gritty British crime novel (John Harvey's procedurals, John Williams' Cardiff-set books, and the output of The Do-Not Press), and this shares a nice grim atmosphere and tone with those. The story starts when a woman who works in the building where Rucker's office is stabbed to death in an alleyway. Her boss hires Rucker to look into the matter, and it looks like a fairly promising intrigue. Meanwhile Rucker is also working one of his standard missing teenager jobs, showing photos to prostitutes and otherwise poking his nose in the filth of the city.
There's also the continuation of threads clearly begun earlier in the series, such as his relationship with his girlfriend who is now working as an aid worker in Afghanistan, his friendship with nightclub owner Nicky, his strained relationship with his ex-partner, and his friendship with his building's cafe owner and his pregnant wife. Soon, however, a second dead person shows up, also with a connection to Rucker, and obviously there's some kind of meaning behind it all. Unfortunately, Baron completely telegraphs the culprit through the rather clumsy overview of a past case. It's a fairly common device in bad mysteries: the author tries to casually make mention a case from the distant past, only for it to be crucial to the current one. Here, Baron offers no red herrings for Rucker to chase, so the reader is left waiting for Rucker to realize the link to the past that the reader has made ages ago.
It's a shame, because the book is very strong in other ways. Baron gets the characters just right, and their reactions to events are dead on. Similarly, the procedural aspects are laid out very well, on both the official police front and Rucker's own digging around. The ambiance shines through, from the sweaty boxing club Rucker belongs to, to the glitzy nightclubs of a raucous night out, to the dingy streets where the hookers operate. I'll definitely check out the first three books of the series with the hope that Baron plays it closer to the vest.
Format:Paperback
The question is: why should we read a novel like this when television is full to bursting with high quality crime dramas. Proudly rejecting the "whodunit" tradition, Baron answers this problem with another outing of his Urban Noir hero, Billy Rucker. In this, the fourth novel of the series, he tries to keep alive his previous success with Shuteye, Hold Back the Night and Superjack, by presenting us with a horrific tale of a serial killer bent on cutting out the babies of pregnant women.
Although it moves at an attractive pace, the story starts slowly with a clunky depiction Josephine Thomas as she lay dying with the `stained concrete walls seeming to close in on her'. Her boss, racked with guilt for sending her home so late, approaches Rucker for answers. The ex-cop and reluctant P.I., is less than enthusiastic about the case but some how manages to look into it between finding missing teens and coming to terms with being `a, oh Christ, birdwatcher'. Rucker is then jolted in to action by the sudden death of his friend only to realise that the case from the past that he just happened to mention earlier is absolutely crucial to current events.
Like 'A Clockwork Orange', this novel had the unfortunate burden of foreshadowing real life events, but unlike Kubrick, Baron seems to have felt no guilt and hasn't stopped publication. This is a shame because despite creating some well-rounded characters, this story just doesn't hold together. Though Rucker escapes the realms of Agatha Christy he simply isn't threatening enough to be believable in the role he plays. Like Big Brother, this book is filled with people I don't like doing things I don't care about and is suitably readable but only when there's nothing better to do.
Although it moves at an attractive pace, the story starts slowly with a clunky depiction Josephine Thomas as she lay dying with the `stained concrete walls seeming to close in on her'. Her boss, racked with guilt for sending her home so late, approaches Rucker for answers. The ex-cop and reluctant P.I., is less than enthusiastic about the case but some how manages to look into it between finding missing teens and coming to terms with being `a, oh Christ, birdwatcher'. Rucker is then jolted in to action by the sudden death of his friend only to realise that the case from the past that he just happened to mention earlier is absolutely crucial to current events.
Like 'A Clockwork Orange', this novel had the unfortunate burden of foreshadowing real life events, but unlike Kubrick, Baron seems to have felt no guilt and hasn't stopped publication. This is a shame because despite creating some well-rounded characters, this story just doesn't hold together. Though Rucker escapes the realms of Agatha Christy he simply isn't threatening enough to be believable in the role he plays. Like Big Brother, this book is filled with people I don't like doing things I don't care about and is suitably readable but only when there's nothing better to do.
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