Review
Dead Right by Peter Robinson
Constable £16.99
In his latest novel, Robinson returns to his native Yorkshire for his setting and again renews the reader’s acquaintance with characters featured in some of his earlier work, the "Copper's Copper" DCI Alan Banks, his young, dedicated and somewhat starry-eyed assistant Susan Gay, cynical Sergeant Jim Hatchley and others.
The unfolding events concern the discovery of a youth kicked to death in an alley on a rainy night in Eastvale. At first it looks like a typical after-hours pub fight gone seriously wrong, but Banks quickly confirms that all is not as simple as it appears. The victim, Jason Fox, was a member of the white power organisation known as the Albion League. Who was his killer or killers? The Pakistani youths he had insulted in the pub earlier that evening? The shady friends of his business partner Mark Wood? Or could it be someone from within the Albion League itself, someone who resented Jason’s growing power with the organisation?
Add to this structured and layered plot development the running conflict between Banks and Chief Constable Riddle, the moral difficulties posed by the involvement in the case of other "undercover" agencies within the force, the problems within Banks' marriage and the disturbing racial tensions and undercurrents which the book explores and here is a complex novel which makes the reader think. It is much more than a question of "Whodunit?"
Robinson uses characters well to make his own statements. The reader is on Banks' side throughout in his battle against the politically correct police bureaucracy who regard real policing for an officer of his rank as sitting in the office, reading reports and crime statistics, delegating the investigative duties to junior officers and keeping anything which smells of danger to their own careers at full arm's length. The reader is made to feel sympathy for the innocent victims of events and to question their own views of a society which can allow such things to happen.
More importantly, the reader is made to confront some frighteningly realistic, pseudo-intellectual neo-Nazi propaganda and to challenge his/her own attitudes and prejudices.
Robinson writes evocatively at times of his setting, capturing aspects of Yorkshire past and present which are familiar to those of us who live here. Like John Wainwright, he makes significant contrasts between the beauty and tranquillity of the rural north of the county and the harder and harsher world of the urban west, throughout his novel, writing with the passion and understanding of a man who has experienced ...and misses...the several and disparate natures of the county.
Does Banks have too many similarities to Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse? Yes, he likes listening to Opera but he also listens to The Beatles. Yes, he likes a drink, but you'd never catch Banks quoting poetry at you.  Yes, he is constantly battling against petty officialdom and the "correct approach" but Banks is an independent creation who lives in a less rarefied world than Morse and who has fewer pretensions. He is therefore more believable and a character whom Robinson can afford to explore further in future work.
"Dead Right" is a fast-paced and multi-layered book which concentrates on the underlying reasons for violent behaviour rather than the violence itself. It is an excellent addition to the work of Peter Robinson
Frank Brown

Review
Iceberg Slim - Airtight Willie and Me
Payback Press pbk £5.99
Pulp noir, in every sense of the words. Iceberg Slim, real name Robert Beck, call him `Beck, Bob, Iceberg, Ice, Berg, nigger, with love and a smile' was by his own account ( Pimp: The Story of My Life) for twenty-five years the most successful pimp on Chicago's tough South Side. These six short stories, from later in his writing career, together form a bizarre, surrealistic and, finally, unforgettable picture of the bleak, macho world of the ghetto pimp and con-man.
Three are semi -autobigraphical. In the title story Willie and Slim, fresh out of jail, con a prostitute for sex, then a `mark' for his wallet. Willie then cons Slim but leaves him `pimp-prancing' towards a new day. In To Steal a Superfox Slim does just that, only to lose her when the lure of turning a trick leads Black
Sue into the arms of a psychopath. In the touching (finally) Lonely Suite Slim looks back with something akin to remorse over some aspects of his career. Satin, one of the three stories told in the third person, finds the writer in heart-rending Victorian melodrama mode as Chicago prostitute Satin returns to Milwaukee to attend her mother's funeral - and plans her last big score so that she can go straight. Melodrama rears its head once again in the grotesque Grandma Randy as cowboy Jay Henderson wreaks his revenge, in an extraordinary climax featuring two cobras (!), on the ex-stripper that seduced him in his orphan youth.
Julian Symons would not have approved, but the chief glory of these tales lies in the extraordinary style in which they are told - like some unholy cross between Robert Leslie Bellem updated for the pre-PC seventies and a black Lord Buckley (anyone else remember Hipsters, Flipsters and Finger Popping Daddies?). In Slim's world, the sun does not rise. It `decapitates night's bummer head with a bright golden ax'(sic). His female friends, sometimes flat-backers, mud-kickers or, more commonly, 'hos (work it out), flash their teeth like `rabid panthers'. Their `blue-black curves shimmer like seal-skin'. The punters react as if in some X-rated Tex Avery cartoon. Tickers `riot', eyes go `phospherescent', scrotums `spasm'. And lovemaking, if I can use such a gentle expression to describe the explosions of lust that litter these pages, ends with `his vanquished monster jailed inside her lubricious cave'. Slim is not given to understatement.
Neither is he given to logical construction. Frequent flashbacks confuse the action. Characters lack differentiation. Women particularly run the gamut of types from A to B. Human relationships are often reduced to economic transactions. The style too has many limitations. Like James Ellroy (who surely has learned a trick or two at Slim's knee), the headlong, garish prose leaves no room for subtlety. Neither, given Beck's later political activism, should you look for any kind of overt social or political analysis. Exploit or be exploited is the chief message of these stories.
Worth a read? Not for the faint-hearted, certainly. But as an introduction to his work , this `Slim' volume is invaluable. Then it's down to you whether to proceed further into his nightmare world.
Bob Cornwell

Review
The Rose Demon by PC Doherty
Headline £16.99
Of the numerous historical crime novelists presently on the scene P.C.Doherty  ranks among the highest.  A relative newcomer to this section of crime literature, The Rose Demon was my first encounter with this master storyteller. Put off by the description of its "epic"  nature and prepared to have to work very hard to keep track of events and characters,  I was pleased to find that the plot was structured with a skill which kept the going easy.  The quality of the writing made the characters distinctive and memorable. 
Against a backcloth of wide ranging factual historical events  of the Middle Ages,  imbued with atmosphere  and detail which only a very knowledgeable lover of the period could capture, Doherty tells the story of a young boy , Matthias Fitzosbert, illegitimate son of a parish priest of a village in Gloucestershire, whose life becomes connected to and dominated by the spirit of Rosifer, one of the fallen angels who was cast out of Heaven with Satan.
As the book opens Constantinople is about to fall to the Turks. Two young Christian knights are commanded by Constantine, the last  Roman Emperor, to destroy, before it falls into the hands of the enemy, a "great evil",  which is lodged deep in the bowels of the palace.  Eutyches, the Priest, will instruct them in how to carry out this task. But the knights are tempted and tricked and the demon spirit is not destroyed but is set free from its prison to roam the world. The relationship between the Spirit and the boy, and then the man, is complex and subtle and  engages the sympathy of the reader.  At times the divisions between Good and Evil seem not so clear cut.  The Rose Demon , on a par with Satan, is sometimes felt to be a tragic figure, as is Matthias, who is never free of the torment that the relationship brings.
The settings are many and varied - from the doomed city of Constantinople to villages and towns of England - the wild and eerie lands of the Scottish marches - Spain - the marvels and beauty of the New World as it was seen by those who sailed with Columbus.  "The Rose Demon" is top entertainment value - and I love the dustjacket!
PED.

Review
Still Water by John Harvey
Heinemann £15.99
This is the ninth and latest entry in a richly satisfying, and occasionally televised, series about the Nottingham policeman Charlie Resnick. Each book stands on its own, but readers who have kept faith with the novels from the days of Lonely Hearts will find added pleasure in seeing the continued development of the characters and relationships in the world that Harvey has created. Even the people who play only a small part in the plot are brought to life wonderfully well. Examples include Mark Divine, a young cop who is struggling to come to terms with a horrific rape, and Helen Siddons, an ambitious woman police officer who is determined to climb the ladder rung by rung. A small group of nuns from an outreach programme set up by the Sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Help are portrayed in equally vivid fashion. The only problem, indeed, with Harvey's characterisation is that when he creates an intriguing individual and then that person drops out of the plot - as with, here, the masseuse Holly - one feels rather disappointed, simply because one wanted to read even more about them. As for Charlie, his relationship with Hannah is gaining in strength, yet there are moments in their scenes when one is aware of echoes of the theme of the main plot strand of the book: the delicate balance of power between men and women.
The book begins with the discovery of a young woman's body in a Nottingham canal: as a result, Charlie is hauled out of a performance by Milt Jackson that he had long been looking forward to (and it should be said that the copious references to jazz throughout the book may become a bit tedious for those who are not fans). It is not the first death in such circumstances, but readers need have no fear: this is not in any sense a run-of-the-mill serial killer story. Later on, a woman called Jane Peterson who is friendly with Hannah and whose husband is a smooth but bullying dentist, disappears during the course of a seminar on women and violence that she had taken pains to arrange. Her body too is fished out of a canal: but Charlie is far from convinced that she has fallen victim to the earlier killer.
The main sub-plot is unorthodox and sees Charlie co-operating with Sister Teresa from the outreach programme in an attempt to resolve a problem about a couple of stolen paintings by the English Impressionist Herbert Dalzeil.  Although  the idea is unusual, I felt that this part of the book was less compelling than that concerning Jane and Alex Peterson and lacked the tension of the interplay between the various police officers.  Fortunately, Harvey writes in short sharp scenes and so the pace scarcely slackens. Indeed, readability is one of the main reasons why the Resnick books rank with the very best police series. This is a crisp and entertaining novel which will not only appeal to Harvey's existing fans but also help to increase their number.
Martin Edwards

 Review
Let There be Blood by Jane Jakeman
Described as a `Lord Ambrose historical mystery', this is the first in what is presumably intended to be a series of novels, Ms. Jakeman is said to be in the process of writing the second. 
This story is set in the West Country in 1830. Lord Ambrose Malfine having fought and almost died in fighting for the independence of his mother's native Greece from her Turkish rulers, is not long returned to his inheritance, his title, one thousand acres and a mansion decrepit through lack of occupation and repair. Having received hideous wounds in his adventures Lord Ambrose feels himself repugnant to the rest of the human race and morosely leads the life of a hermit with only the company of his trusted servant Belos. However, when a local farmer and his son are murdered, and a gypsy is about to be lynched for the crime, local people with more reverence for the rule of law call upon him to settle the matter.
After stopping the lynching and ordering the incarceration of the suspect in the dungeons at Malfine, doubts begin to arise in Lord Ambrose's mind about the identity of the killer or killers, and he starts to look into the matter more seriously, a dangerous process that leads almost to his own death, before he finally comes to a solution. On the way he encounters several people who might have had reason to kill one of the victims, old Gideon Crawshay, a thoroughly unpleasant and violent man, but who would have wanted to kill his meek and mild son, Edmund. Living at the farmhouse are Marie Crawshay, wife and daughter-in-law of the victims, and her infant son Edmund (whose difficult birth has led his mother to excessive use of laudanum as a pain killer) and Elisabeth Anstruther, governess to young Edmund, whose past is a mystery. From the village, where many had reason to hate foul-mouthed old Crawshay, come the ex-soldier Thomas Granby and Seliman Day, a local hothead, amongst others and who is the mysterious stranger with a limp?
This is a short tale and an easy read, and the story itself is quite engaging, but Lord Ambrose's life story to date takes up rather more than I felt necessary. I appreciate that some introduction to the main character is required and that it is intended to produce a series of Lord Ambrose novels, but some of the background could have been filled in as the series progressed. There is some excellent descriptive work throughout the novel, a lot of which no doubt owes itself to Ms. Jakeman's background as a much travelled art historian, but I occasionally was confused by the darting between past and present and the odd eccentricity in the use of tenses, however overall I enjoyed this book, a creditable first novel.
DAL.