Now's the Time by
John Harvey
hbk out September 99
Published by Slow Dancer Press
at £16.99
This book contains the complete Resnick short stories and appears a year after Last Rites which is, it seems, the last Resnick novel. There have been ten of these, beginning with Lonely Hearts in 1989. If Last Rites does mark the end of Resnick it will be a pity. Resnick has established himself over the years as one of the more interesting and attractive detectives of our time, not curmudgeonly and miserly like Morse (I quote Colin Dexter) and not quite as scruffy as Frost. Resnick is of Polish background, eats delicatessen sandwiches, loves jazz and has four cats. Another redeeming feature is that he is never able to complete a quotation. When Nicola Vanner says, "A custom - what does Shakespeare say?" Resnick doesn't know, but Wexford would have known. Resnick was played, very sympathetically, on television by Tom Wilkinson.
The stories collected here are a novelist's short stories. They are told in short sequences, allowing frequent changes of point of view, and read like very short novels. The dialogue is modern and clipped: Go wading in, all we're like to do is warn him off, Come up empty handed. Characters already met in the novels appear here in several of the stories. Most notable is the attractive Grabianski. He appears here in Bird, still the same old Grabianski, ready to take risks and to go to the aid of a damsel in distress. Resnick likes him, but is glad to see the back of him.
The titles of the stories, including the title of the book - She Rote, Cheryl, Stupendous, etc - are all culled from the Charlie Parker Songbooks, titles of tunes which Parker wrote and recorded. And we must not forget that Resnick's first name is Charlie. The detailed enthusiasm of the jazz buff is evident in many of the stories: the eight-piece Lyttleton band with Tony Coe on alto, the late Jimmy Skidmore on tenor, Temperley on baritone.
So: ten novels in ten years and a volume of eleven short stories. It is not a large output and one would have hoped for more. Devotees will most certainly not be pleased.
Now's the Time by
John Harvey