Full of Money - Hardcover

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.

The always reliable James proffers a gripping London-based tale of drugs, murder, and revenge, liberally laced with his trademark dark humor and sharp dialogue. Journalist Gervaise Manciple Tasker has been brutally murdered for digging too deeply into the affairs of drug kingpin Adrian Pellotte. Meanwhile, Pellotte's daughter, Dione, is dating television personality Rupert Bale; unfortunately, Bale hails from the Temperate Park Acres housing estate, which is a direct rival to Pellotte's own Whitsun Festival patch. Worse, Bale has a sexy new cohost on his show, and Pellotte wants the show's producer, the innocent and naive Larry Edgehill, to make sure there's no funny business between Bale and his costar. Detective Chief Superintendent Esther Davidson is sure that a big drug war is about to break out between Pellotte's Whitsun gang and his rivals from Temperate, and the pressure is on to prevent open warfare and arrest Tasker's killer quickly, allowing London's image as a safe, calm city to remain untarnished when the city puts in its bid to host the 2012 Olympics. The darkly hilarious dialogue, crisp writing, twisted plot, cryptic characters, and slam-bang ending make this another winner from one of Britain's best crime writers. --***Booklist, 1st November 2009