King Of The Streets by
John Baker
pbk out February 98
(Gollancz)
at £9.99
Sam Turner's detective agency resembles a home for waifs and strays -- a teenager rescued from homelessness, a retired English teacher and a self-mutilating widow with an eating disorder. But then, Sam's not exactly Philip Marlowe either. A non-drinking alcoholic who sees his life in terms of Bob Dylan lyrics, he prowls the mean streets of York probing behind the respectable façade of the city the tourists see.
For just like every other city, York has its seamy side. And in his understated way, John Baker rips away the fabric of gentility and reveals the real life that seethes underneath. In King of the Streets, he explores and exposes the insidious world of the gangsters who use a mixture of force, drugs and money to keep their hands firmly on the levers of power.
The story has a deceptively simple opening. Two men charged with watching the city centre video security cameras have developed a scam selling footage to anyone who'll pay, ranging from porn merchants to kerb-crawlers. But their racket backfires when they pick a target too powerful to blackmail. The men end up dead, their homes trashed by intruders, and the estranged wife of one turns in panic to Sam for help.
Baker's plot is not particularly original, but his characters endear themselves to us, and we care what happens to them. The writing is always quirky, never flashy, and in spite of the horrors that we keep glimpsing out of the corner of our eyes, he leaves us wanting more of an engaging crew who feel like friends by the end of the book.
(
Val McDermid
- Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill)
King Of The Streets by
John Baker