Customer Reviews

Superjack

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The third of Baron's dark, London-set, Billy Rucker series forgoes the missing children that ex-police detective Rucker specializes in tracking down. Instead, the two plotlines emerge from his best friend Nicky, an ex-drug dealer turned pub owner Bengali semi-wideboy.

As if Nicky wasn't exotic enough, his best friend from childhood happens to be "Super" Jack Draper, a 32-year-old striker finally getting his big chance with 1st Division side Leyton Orient. He's scoring goals in droves, and is just playing out the season before some Premiership team picks him up. His problem is that someone has nailed a cat to his door and has been threatening his family. Not wanting to involve the police, he gets sent to Rucker by Nicky. At first Rucker doesn't want to help him, but when he changes his mind, it's a little too late, as the mutilated body of Draper's mistress is discovered and he goes into hiding. Rucker is then hired by Draper's wife to uncover the truth, although the police seem pretty sure "Superjack" did it. Meanwhile, Nicky has been acting strangely, and it transpires that he's been doing a little money laundering for the Maltese underworld. Alas, someone's made off with the money he's supposed to lauder, and if he doesn't pay up soon, he'll be killed.

As both storylines unfold around Rucker's energetic efforts to try and figure out both if Draper was set up (and if so, by who) and who made off with Nicky's £45,000, he's juggling his repressed feeling for his ex and his ambivalent feelings for his current bedmate, Nicky's sister. Baron does a nice job of handling this and showing Rucker as a flawed person with plenty of issues of his own. As in the other two I've read in the series, the ending has a huge "shocker" twist, but while the other two were pretty obvious way in advance, this one isn't. And in some ways, it's a much more over-the-top twist, despite the careful foundation Baron lays. It's still a good, gritty read, and well worth it if you like your crime based in London and close to the streets.