Customer Reviews

The Bad Detective (Isis)

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Where can I find a Jack Stallworthy? A fellow so dedicated to his choc eating wife that he'll do anything to get her what she wants...I can play that part! He doesn't even blame her! He admits that even without Lily to please he might have been bad.

And Jack isn't REALLY bad, he's just a little bit bad. And considering what the world has come to, who could blame him? Ah, these are the traps the devil sets! You can't help liking the guy, and the people he does down deserve it so!

I'm delighted to report this is the first Keating book I've read--meaning I've got 49 wonderful stories to go! Keating reminds me of Donald Westlake--a very complimentary comparison.

Great fun. But--I hate to admit--I don't understand the ending! I missed the twist! That's a recommendation...I hope I do better next time.

After serving on the Abbotsport Central police force for three decades, fifty-two year old Detective Sergeant Jack Stallworthy ponders retirement. However, he knows his meager pension will not cover the expense of him and his wife Lily living on the tropical island of Ko Samui.

A bitter Jack becomes approachable to bribery and information technology executive Emslie Warnaby offers the bait. In exchange for stealing a file the police sized during an arrest, Emslie will provide two plane tickets to Ko Samui and the deed to a hotel on the island. However, Jack's efforts to beat the clock imposed on him by Emslie fail even as the cop keeps raising his criminal activity.

THE BAD DETECTIVE shows why H.R.F. Keating deserves the life time achievement award he has received. The story line centers on Jack's efforts to retrieve the file. However, on a deeper level Mr. Keating provides an interesting financial parity between the crooks and the cops. Even as Jack digs himself into a more serious situation, readers will empathize with his efforts and actually root for his success. The author of Inspector Ghote writes another winner.

Harriet Klausner

Okay, you sorta root for the guy, and defer judgement on his corruption, but he's a Bad Detective. Not just neglecting his job, either.

When he applies himself to solving a problem, he NEVER has a plan, options, or an exit strategy. (Sound familiar?) This continually suprises him.

He's always a hair-trigger away from violence - will he blow? - no, the only violence he commits is off-stage. Nor does he ever learn from his mistakes and improve. "Victories" gained by luck are claimed; inevitable "defeats" are rationalized away. The guy's a loser, and what little care he has for his fellow man always loses out to his own short-sighted selfishness.

The writing, on the other hand, is often delightful. Clipped phrasing. Idiom-tastic. Veddy, veddy British. I have not read this author before and won't again... unless his loyal fans can convince me of a different title I might try.

The protagonist here, Detective Sgt. Stallworthy, is not so much bad as he is badly drawn. Hardly drawn at all, in fact. At the end of the novel the still-expectant reader finds himself faced with the same unexceptional character he met at the outset-- a middlingly-corrupt civil servant still pondering his various and wholly unremarkable middle class obsessions: gardening, his retirement cottage, and/or keeping his wife happy. Z-z-z-z-z. Oh, sorry, I must have dozed off there for a moment. Which shouldn't happen while recounting crime fiction, right?

Though Stallworthy's horizons have been circumscribed by his doctor as the story (such as it is) peters out, one can only shrug So what? Can there really be any sense of irony or loss when the good Sgt. has done so little detecting in the story-- whose unintriguing plot focuses (repetitively) on the mechanics of retrieving a document-- and hasn't noticeably developed as an individual either?

To judge by his awards and output, Keating *must* be better than this, one thinks-- though it'll be hard to convince me to pony up [more money] to find out. In any event, judging by what's quoted on the book's paperback cover, "The Bad Detective" may at least serve one good end: providing one more good reason for introducing Truth in Blurbing laws.