Lovely Mover by
Bill James
hbk out June 98
Published by Macmillan
at £16.99
Keith Vine is opinionated, conceited and single minded. He is a drug dealer who expects loyalty and subservience from those who deal for him so it comes as a shock when he realises that Eleri ap Vaughan is trying to double cross him. In Keith Vine's view, such actions can mean only one solution; she must be disposed of in order to teach a lesson to any other would-be strayers.
Harpur is a detective who is working under cover and he has befriended Vine. Iles is Harpur's superior who is aware of the undercover operation and Lovely Mover is the nickname given to a London spy who may be planning a coup of the Welsh drugs scene.
The story basically concerns a variety of people, all of whom are involved in one way or another with drugs. Ralph Ember, (better known as Panicking Ralph) owns a club and is a rival dealer to Vine. Ember's sidekicks are Foster and Reid; crude, unsophisticated and greedy and all three are controlled by Barney and his two geriatric Ladies-in-waiting, Camilla and Maud.
Keith Vine's wife is bright, intelligent and intuitive though not empowered with the latter quite to the degree of Hazel and Jill, Harpur's teenage daughters. It therefore makes one wonder exactly what someone so perceptive could possibly be doing with a loathsome man like Vine and this is where my difficulties with this book begin. On too many pages, I found myself doubting the actions of the characters. For instance, it is hard to imagine teenage girls joking with their father about paedophile advances from his superior; it is even harder to contemplate that a man like Harpur would allow his girls to stay with him for their own protection!
Generally, the whole portrayal of the drugs network was unconvincing. None of these small time businessmen or crooks who dealt seemed to use drugs themselves and whilst the writer may have wanted us to take that as read, none of the characters were really plausible enough to imagine anything very much. There was a real lack of detail concerning many of the characters and overall, the story was just too thin. An example of this is the idea that Eleri ap Vaughan, a sixty year old woman could deal drugs in an exclusive bar by sitting on a bar stool with a rum and coke. It just doesn't ring true, even when allowing for that enormous poetic license which is usually permitted in crime novels.
I haven't read any Harpur and Iles novels before and according to reviews by eminent writers of others in the series, either I'm missing the point, they are all tongue in cheek, or this one doesn't typify Bill James's usual style. However, I may be batting a lone wicket here and on the plus side, the book is very easy to read and certainly contains a fair splattering of action. If you are a Harpur and Iles fan, you will read it anyway and if you are new to Bill James, then you still should, if only to prove that my comments are merely an individual's response.
Lovely Mover by
Bill James