DVD review: THE CHINESE DETECTIVE (1981-82)

Although awesomely prolific in the crime and mystery genre, Ian Kennedy Martin will probably be best remembered as the creator of The Sweeney, even though he didn’t write a single episode of the actual series leaving immediately after setting up the template in the feature-length pilot, Regan. More recently one could still see its influence in the ‘Gene Hunt’ character from Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. Robbed of the post-modern and fantasy trappings surrounding him, Hunt is very much recognisable as a pastiche of the kind of tough coppers played by Patrick Mower, Lewis Collins and Dennis Waterman in 1970s shows like Target, The Professionals and most potent of all, The Sweeney. Martin however went on to create several other shows with which he was much more intimately involved including the long running feminist procedural Juliet Bravo and perhaps most interesting of all, The Chinese Detective. Continue reading →

THAT ANGEL LOOK (1997) by Mike Ripley

The Alphabet of Crime community meme over at the Mysteries in Paradise blog this week reaches the letter T, and my nomination, is …

THAT ANGEL LOOK by Mike Ripley

“I resorted to one of my long-standing philosophical maxims and thought: Stuff this for a bunch of soldiers.”

What can you say about a crime novel in which the hero, despite being bright, articulate, University-educated and a worldly-wise musician, spends most of his time driving a black cab and working as a gopher? That this same protagonist, when he’s not getting pushed around by cops and drug dealers, is also clearly under the thumb of not just his ambitious girlfriend but also completely at the mercy of his vicious pet cat? That this is the kind of novel in which the leading ladies turn out to be either neo-Nazis, witches or Thatcherite scum? Well, for starters, you would have to accept that this is a paradoxical book, one that treats subjects such as racism without levity and yet has a wisecracking laugh-to-page ratio to make most hardboiled wordsmiths envious. Welcome to Angel’s world, which resembles London, England in the 1990s on the cusp of the Internet revolution. Continue reading →

PIGEON ENGLISH (2011) by Stephen Kelman

The Alphabet of Crime community meme over at the Mysteries in Paradise blog has reached the letter P, and my first nomination this week is …

PIGEON ENGLISH by Stephen Kelman

This novel was launched earlier this year on a wave of advance publicity following a surprising bidding war between publishers for the rights – surprising because this is Stephen Kelman’s first book. Like the previously reviewed Rupture by Simon Lelic, another debut novelist, this is a work that is recognisable within the confines of the crime genre and yet one that many will feel doesn’t comfortably belong there. Both have plots centred around a seemingly senseless crime in London’s urban sprawl and both try to reveal some greater truth beneath acts of violence all to familiar from the nightly news. While Lelic’s book was mostly notable for taking in over a dozen points of view, Pigeon English is much more narrowly focused though it too goes to great pains to paint a convincing picture of contemporary modes of speech and behaviour as used by inner city youth. Continue reading →