Mission Flats by
William Landay
hbk out June 03
Published by Bantam
at £12.99
Ben Truman, chief of police in Versailles, a sleepy backwater in Maine, is wondering
whether he will ever be able to leave. His mother has recently died and his father,
previous chief of police, is a mess, falling apart day by day. Does the same fate await
Ben? Ben is shocked when a rotting body turns up in a holiday cabin by the lake.
The victim is a prosecutor from Boston DA's office who has been investigating gang-
related murders in the city. Ben is determined to hold onto a piece of the action even
though the Boston cops would rather he left them to it. This could be his way out, a
means of escape from the stifling small town. But why do the trails of the case keep
linking back to Versailles and to a series of police raids twenty years before.
The naïve country cop in the big bad city is not an unfamiliar story but Landay makes
it his own with a sympathetic central character, good quality often witty writing, stark
brutality and a stunning twist to the tale. This is a first novel for Landay who himself
worked as a Boston assistant district attorney and has first hand experience of the
effects of deprivation, violence and loss of hope in the inner-city and the shameful
legacy of years of police corruption.
Manchester Evening News 14.6.03
(
Cath Staincliffe
author of the popular Sal Kilkenny mysteries set on the mean streets of Manchester)
Mission Flats by
William Landay
