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I am a devoted fan of Bill James and his Harpur and Iles series. In this series he seems to have found his voice, and it's always entertaining. Set in an unnamed city in Northern England, Harpur is a hard working detective chief superintendent with a brilliant, but occasionally insane boss, Desmond Iles. Iles is brilliant, but has not only been known to take the law into his own hands, when called for; but sometimes goes berserk when he remembers that his wife once had an affair with Harpur. Over the time of the series, Iles' wife has had affairs with other colleagues, and one notable villain, who may well have been the father of the Iles baby daughter. Harpur, who looks like Rocky Marciano, has more than his own share of brains, despite his looks - and finds himself trying to keep Iles out of trouble, while getting the villains in trouble. This is the 23rd book in the series and, as usual, it's hard to wait for the next. Each book in the series is like a chapter in a book, you know there's another chapter arriving in a year.

Over the course of the series, James also introduces us to a variety of villains, frequently eccentric, and nearly always trying to achieve respectability, if not nobility. Ralph Ember, for example, proprietor of the Monty, a club frequented by the criminal element of the city, has by skulduggery and plain dumb luck climbed up to the ownership of a large, stately manor from his humble beginnings running a pub for lowlifes. His affluence comes primarily from distributing drugs and he has had many adventures and misadventures over the years. His daughters attend expensive schools, where Ralph works hard to convince the headmistress she must bring Latin into the curriculum. Ralph himself has taken courses through the Mature Students degree of the local university, and writes letters to the local paper on matters of importance. Ralph is only one of the shady characters we come to know and rather enjoy.

The language is British understated, low key, funny in a sly and clever way. It's as though James is letting you in on a private joke. It's about the characters and the dialogue as much as the crimes and, as a touch of realism, the difficulty in actually enforcing drug laws. Iles has his own way of dealing with the drug situation, which has worked quite nicely 'til now. The first crack in his plan - brought on by a new police policy. What will happen next?