Come Clean

This fifth entry in James' lengthy (20+ books) "Harpur & Iles" police procedural series is probably my least favorite so far. The fourth ("Protection") book's storyline revolved around a gang war between two protection rackets. This one is built around the exact same premise, only the conflict is between the two gangs that are left following the events of the previous book. In that book, the perspective shifted between DCS Harpur and that of the various colorful gangsters. Here, Harpur is all but absent for the first 100 pages, as events swirl around Sarah Iles and her lover, Ian Aston. Sarah happens to be the wife of the Assistant Chief Commissioner of the police (ie. Harpur's boss), and while out with Aston, happens to witness what might have been the prelude to a murder. This all ties into a brewing war between two longtime protection racket rivals, each of whom has coated himself with a heavy veneer of social respectability. What ensues is a great deal of toing-and-froing, as the one set of gangsters try to figure out if their top secret plans to kill off the others have been compromised, and Sarah struggles to turn a blind eye to what she saw, while retaining her lover. Harpur and Iles don't really come into it much until a body is produced, and then they also engage in lots of running around trying to figure out what's up. Meanwhile, Harpur knows of Sarah's infidelity to his boss, and tries to figure out how to keep her from getting caught up in the tangled mess. Thanks to James' snappy dialogue, it's all quite readable and fairly entertaining, but it never achieves a high level of suspense. And to a certain extent, the cops and crims start to sound alike, as they speak in the same stylized doubletalk (as do Harpur's daughters!). At 250 pages, this is the longest in the series so far, and it feels rather bloated in comparison, as if James was struggling to find his way. It also makes more assumptions that the reader has read the four earlier books, as Harpur's mistress is referred to but never seen, ditto for Sarah's previous lover, and Harpur's complex relationship with superinformant Jack Straw is taken for granted. Indeed, it's advisable to start with the first book, You'd Better Believe It. Overall, this one is definitely not up to par, as the plotting isn't as crisp and twice relies heavily on coincidence to propell the plot. However, there is a colorful new character introduced in the form of dodgy club owner "Panicking" Ralph Embry, whom I'm sure will crop up later in the series.