Customer Reviews

Double Jeopardy

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Normally I find that Bill James should stick to his wonderful, and very unique, characters - Harpur and Iles and the series that features them. I've normally not been very happy with the books he's written with other main characters. So I was delighted to find myself enjoying this one immensely. He has done a good job of writing using women as main characters - I believed them and felt the plot flowed from the characters - one of my main criteria for a well-written mystery.

I read it straight through and felt that James really had his hand on the wheel - a confident, strong, elegantly written (if quirky, which we expect from this writer) book. I love his style with Harpur and Iles - it's original and fits the atmosphere he's creating. This time out he's modified that style to suit this plot and these characters - and that is appropriate. There's still enough James here to keep his fans (and count me right in the front of this group) happy.

A woman police detective on her way up, and a woman who comes to England to find out why and how her daughter was murdered, team up to get the real story, and then to make sure some sort of justice is done. Satisfying, I call it. I think this is a book any James fan will enjoy, and would be a fine introduction to a reader new to Bill James and his very original take on police procedurals.

Angela Sabat, a young black woman from Detroit, is killed in an English provincial town. Who did it? Suspicion points at Matthew Gain and at Peter Vincent Pethor, called Scout, the twin brother of P.D. Pethor. Both had been prosecuted for the murder but released due to lack of evidence. Double Jeopardy: The two can not be tried again for the same crime.

For reasons not entirely clear, Detective Kerry Lake now goes fulltime after the perpetrators. Her road is not fascinating, surprising, or innovative. As a matter of fact, the whole procedure is extremely boring on the scale of "he said, she said, they all said", sprinkled with profound thoughts. The different players do not even manage to stay in character. The suspects never change.There is no new evidence. By the time the crime is solved - more or less without outside help - you could not care less about who did it.

Forget it.

Scout Pethor and Matthew Gain have been cleared of the murder of beautiful black co-ed Angela Sabat--and the British police are intent to discover why, and to find a scapegoat. Because they believe Pethor and Gain are guilty as sin, and that only a police coverup could have brought about their acquittal. Vic Othen, Kerry Lake's sometimes lover, looks to be an appropriate fall guy. He did, after all, discover the body acting on a tip. Couldn't he have been called in to hide the evidence? Who else but the killers would have known where to send him?

Kerry lives in a world where everyone seems to know everyone else's secrets. Her love affair with Vic, even her meeting with Pethor's brother become common knowledge among Pethor's criminal gang, his jailed competitor, her police chief, and even the victim's mother--a journalist intent on discovering the truth and just maybe creating a bit of justice. The British courts deny that justice is possible. Gain and Pethor can't be tried again under the rules of double jeopardy. But that doesn't mean that their lives need be pleasant. Unfortunately, they seem just smart enough to be able to stay ahead of justice, just as they've stayed ahead of the law.

Author Bill James writes powerfully about the moral ambiguities and small victories of the modern police. In this short but complex novel, everyone is working an angle, everyone has more than one hidden agenda, and nothing is what it seems. Even when Kerry assures herself that she wouldn't continue to support Vic if she knew him corrupt, there is always a question mark at the end of her question. When the law holds a killer innocent, what moral rules can or should apply?

As with James's Harpur and Iles novels, DOUBLE JEOPARDY deals with shades of gray. Killing a black woman is worse than beating one up. Giving a free ride to a criminal in prison might be better than a free ride to a killer who is free. And taking a bribe might not be so bad if the cop doing the taking doesn't really deliver what she promised. DOUBLE JEOPARDY left me feeling disturbed, dirty, and entertained.