Phantom by
Roy Lewis
hbk out December 02
Published by Allison Busby
at £17.99
One of the continual joys of the less commercial variety of crime fiction
is its willingness to seek out a broader canvas of crime than that allowed
to its best-selling brethren. You know,for instance, that you are in for
something out of the ordinary when a book, like this one, ostensibly set in Newcastle, opens in the South
China Sea.
This one features Lewis’s ex-policeman turned lawyer Eric Ward, a
spikily independent sort of guy going through, at this time, a stressful
divorce from his wife Anne. A ship operated by local shipping company,
Goldwaters, has been ‘arrested’ and a crew member is suspected of
smuggling drugs. But Goldwaters feels that more is at stake and Ward is
asked to use his contacts to determine just what, whilst keeping the
whole thing under wraps.
It’s an intriguing start (do ships really get ‘arrested’?) that soon
reveals some even more fascinating aspects of the international shipping
business. There is also a secondary more earthbound plot concerning
‘unethical practices in the Tyneside restaurant business’. Both plot
strands will involve Eric with his old adversary DCI Charlie Spate – and
another lawyer, the more beguiling Sharon Owen.
Sometimes such explorations of the byways of crime are accompanied by a
prose style of wearying banality – but not here. Lewis writes with
muscular authority, red-blooded action does not phase him, and his male
characters particularly bristle with authenticity – as befits a writer
with a career that goes back to 1969, producing fifty books amongst
which are the acclaimed Arnold Landon antiquarian series.
If I have a complaint about the book it is that the secondary plot is
dealt with somewhat fleetingly, so that it becomes something of a
surprise when it takes on greater significance towards the end. But an
excellent piece of work that will please his many fans, and maybe tempt
new readers to explore his back catalogue.
Phantom by
Roy Lewis
