Customer Reviews

Pix (Harpur & Iles Mystery 24)

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This is not really what one could call a mystery or a police procedural or anything else that's like anything else. The book is really about Mr. James's love affair with the British class system, his character's illusions about themselves and, above all, the English language. His continuing riff (over several chapters) on various people's reactions to a mauve shirt worn tie-less with a classic tailored suit by Mansel Shale to a dinner party astounds and delights, and one quickly realizes that Mr. James is an English prose stylist/satirist in the league of Jane Austen. For rock 'em and sock 'em, visit Ken Bruen; for a couple of hundred pages lived inside the heads of some of the queerest ducks in all England (and Wales), pick up PIX.

Pix, Bill James' continuing stygian, hilarious chronicles of his favorite cops, Harpur and Iles, provide appropriate, cliff-hanging moments that ornament good, tough detective fiction. But, underneath the action,things get even better. James provides his specialty: the satiric exploration of the complex relationship of the villains, the police, the politicians and the good folk of Great Britain. James' masterly dialogue plays like a concerto throughout and ends with two Iles' trademark notes: advancement of the policy of "masterly inactivity" and the reminder that "things are in goodish hands." His.