Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
Unconventional Detective Declan Miller has a problem. Well, two problems. First, there's his dead wife and her yet-to-be-solved murder. He really should stop talking to her ghosts...
Second, and most pressing, a young man has just appeared on his doorstep with a briefcase . . . containing a pair of severed hands. Miller knows this case is proof of a contract killing commissioned by local ne'er do well Wayne Cutler—a man he suspects might also be responsible for his wife's death. Now Miller has leverage, but unfortunately, he also has something that both Cutler and a villainous fast-food kingpin are desperate to get hold of.
Sprinkle in a Midsomer Murders-obsessed hitman, a psychotic welder, and a woman driven over the edge by a wayward Crème Egg, and Miller is in a mess that even he might not be able to dance his way out of.
When I look back on my reading days before I began reviewing crime and thriller fiction for various publications and judging crime writing prizes in several countries over the past fifteen or so years, my favourite crime series were probably Michael Connelly’s Bosch books, James Lee Burke’s Robicheaux, and the gritty Tom Thorne series by Mark Billingham (after loving Sherlock Holmes, the Hardy Boys and Agaton Sax as a kid, Poirot as an adolescent, and Alex Cross and Kay Scarpetta as a teen).
Last year, Birmingham-born storyteller Billingham tossed readers a bit of a googly (or a change-up, to put it in US sporting terms), with The Last Dance, which introduced his first new series protagonist in more than two decades. Despite also being a British police detective, the rat-loving, ballroom dancing widower DS Declan Miller is very different to Tom Thorne. And the series has a very different tone, as Billingham returns to his stand-up comic roots. The Last Dance was brilliant, a hilarious and heartfelt novel with a one-of-a-kind sleuth. So how does the sequel fare?
In short, The Wrong Hands underlines Billingham’s status as one of modern crime fiction’s greats.
Fumbling foxtrots, irreverent humour, and policing slapstick and serious are all on the menu again in this superb sequel that may have readers laughing out loud in some passages and emotionally engrossed in others. The cops in Blackpool, a crumbling place recently voted (in real life) as the UK’s worst seaside town, think they finally have crime boss Wayne Cutler bang to rights, only for a sting operation to be upturned by a couple of local larrikins. Cue the Keystone Cops music. When a young man turns up on DS Declan Miller’s doorstep with a briefcase containing severed appendages, Miller realises he may finally have the upper hand – pun intended – to catch those behind the murder of his wife, dance partner, and fellow detective Alex. Not that he trusts the official police investigation.
So with heavy metal-loving, motorbike riding Detective ‘Posh’ Xiu, alongside a menagerie of pals and contacts, Miller tries to follow some tricky steps and not put his foot in it for investigations professional and private, while hoping not to get voted off life’s dancefloor, permanently.
In The Wrong Hands, Billingham expertly delivers another fantastic read, full of grin-inducing characters on both sides of the law. Where there were touches of gallows humour in his earlier books, the DS Miller series offers guffaws and belly laughs. It could translate brilliantly to the screen, and in whatever form, we’ll have to hope there’s lots more to come from dancing detective Miller.
Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.
No comments:
Post a Comment