Take

The sixth book in the Harpur & Iles series is a deceptively simple cops and robbers procedural. A very careful local criminal has assembled a crew for a payroll robbery. Harpur & Iles get a very vague sense that something is in the air, but have no idea what. They must race to discover what the job is, without tipping off the suspects. Meanwhile, the hoods must hold it together as the pressure of waiting mounts, and circumstances alter, both in terms of risk and reward. As usual in James' books, the plot is simple, while the characters are less so. There's the wonderful "Planner" Preston, the mastermind of the heist who is nearing middle age and simultaneously vying for the title of the world's most cautious criminal and struggling with getting old. Also on the team is "Mother" Mansell, a nervous nellie of a different sort, who is the crew's self-appointed guardian of mental health, constantly checking up on how everyone is doing. There are the two out-of-towners brought in for additional manpower, one of whom is disconcertingly sharp, the other disconcertingly attractive. And for extra muscle, local loose cannon "Hopper" is added to the team. The disparate crew grows increasingly edgy over several weeks as they iron out the plan, work their inside contacts, and try and figure out if the police have any hint of the heist. On the other side, Harpur and Iles are both heavily distracted by their private lives -- Harpur with his ongoing affair with the wife of a subordinate, and Iles with the possibly ongoing affair of his pregnant wife (which was the main storyline in the previous book, Come Clean). Getting little tidbits of information here and there, they start to piece things slowly together, more by chance than design. This all builds up to a chaotic climax as the heist goes all pear-shaped -- as does the police response. James juggles all the strands capably and as usual, the dialogue is fun stuff. However, the pacing isn't quite as good as usual, as some of material gets a little repetitive.

Bill James' Harpur and Iles novels are a great pleasure -- this is one series I actively pursue, checking for new ones whenever it seems one might be due. This is up to James' high standards, with memorable crooks and the brilliant character of Desmond Iles contrasted, as always, with the more methodical and much more ethical Harpur. Their uneasy alliance is one of the greatest, and funniest, relationships in mystery fiction. I recommend every book in this series for wonderful characters -- Panicking Ralph is worth a series to himself -- plus tremendous action and lots and lots of humor.

Ron "Planner" Preston likes a nicely controlled job. He's made his criminal career out of arranging medium-sized heists, and making sure there's no danger. Inside information about a payroll lets him think he's got another perfect fit--and he lines up the muscle he needs to make it happen. But when the armored car company adds another man, and two more deliveries, all of a sudden, the job seems a little too much big-time. Still, Preston has a wife, a daughter, a mistress and another child who need taking care of--and then there's the young actress from 'Annie Get Your Gun.' Dare he risk a bigger job, the biggest of his criminal career? Or should he back down, and risk being thought as past it? Detective Colin Harpur has a feeling something is coming down, but his usual source is more worried about a missing girl than any big jobs. Still, a possibly bent cop is asking questions, seemingly ascertaining that the cops aren't looking. And Harpur wants to make sure that the cops will be looking at the right time. With occasional help and general hinderance from his boss, Assistant Chief Iles, Harpur tries to put logic and intuition on the line in a world where the criminals hold the cards and get to make the first play. As in all of his Harpur and Iles series, author Bill James provides a dark view of policing. The moral distinctions between cop and criminal are occasionally hard to see, with Harpur continuing an affair with the wife of one of his own cops and Iles prepared to destroy anyone who gets in his way and fixated on whether his wife might end her own affair now that she is pregnant. The aging criminal Ron Preston is clearly the most sympathetic character in the story--as he rationalizes his sexual outlets and his criminal activities, does his best to be a good family man, and encourages his fellow criminals to help support his wife's amateur theater works (where his wife acts along with Harpur's children). The reader is intially torn between hoping that the heist will succeed and hoping that it can be stopped. In this early Harpur and Iles story, the humor is a little less dark, and the cynicism a little less hard-biting than in some of the more recent stories, but the seeds are definitely planted. TAKE is not the best in this series, but it is an interesting and thought-provoking read. As is usual in James's stories, TAKE warrents a bit of extra time and thought--there's more here than might show with a fast read-through.

Take is the fifth novel in Bill James's series of cynical mysteries about Colin Harpur, an adulterous but basically decent cop in an unnamed South of England town; and his boss Desmond Ives, a basically not very decent at all but fiercely intelligent and terribly careerist man. All James's novels feature chapters from the POV of the criminals, but in this case rather more than half of the book is from the criminal viewpoint.Ron "Planner" Preston is a small-time crook, or perhaps I should say "medium-time", known for careful and fairly conservative jobs. In this case he has planned a robbery of a payroll delivery truck, hoping to net some 70,000 pounds. But the truck he is targeting suddenly turns up with an extra guard and two extra stops -- meaning the job should net at least three times the "take". But Preston is cautious -- he doesn't know if the extra money is worth the extra risk. He's forced to recruit an unstable additional team member, and things are further complicated when his daughter gets involved with one of his recruits. Complicated personal reasons to do with his daughter, his wife, his mistress, a new girl he'd like to seduce, his advancing age, all push him to take risks he ordinarily wouldn't.Meanwhile Harpur and Ives are unaware of Preston's plans. Harpur's daughters, however, are in the same community theatre production as Preston's wife. And Ives's wife is pregnant -- but she is still carrying on an affair with a criminal snitch who might be linked to Preston. One of Preston's informants is a bent cop. And Harpur's mistress's husband is another cop, one of the top marksmen in the force, a man who will be part of any team involved in an armed ambush if one becomes necessary.The two teams slowly converge, basically unaware of what's really going on -- a comedy of errors and miscalculations on both sides leading to a savagely ironic conclusion. As ever with James, a cynically funny book, with plenty of gaspingly nasty lines, with a criminal lead character who somehow gains a bit of our sympathy even as we see that he is really a bad person. I missed to some extent some of Harpur and Iles' interplay -- it's still here in this book but reduced. Nonetheless, another fine dark crime novel.