Latest . Gone to Ground
As Editor . Men from Boys | Blue Lightning
In a True Light . In a True Light | Latest reviews
Jack Kiley . Meet Jack Kiley | Short Stories
Other Stories . Drummer Unknown
Please visit the new page dedicated to Frank Elder
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Gone to Ground
Set in Cambridgeshire and the surrounding Fens and the more familiar landscape of Nottinghamshire, Gone to Ground features Detective Inspector Will Graham and Detective Sergeant Helen Walker, who first saw the light of day in the short story, "Snow, Snow, Snow". When their investigation into the murder of Stephen Bryan, a film historian and academic, falters, Bryan's radio journalist sister takes it upon herself to find out what happened. Soon all three are caught up in a morass of corrupt business practices, family secrets and fifties film noir.
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John Harvey’s new novel is immaculately plotted, and constructed with care and skill. The setting is Cambridge, and the victim, Stephen Bryan, is a lecturer in film studies. DI Will Grayson, investigating, is contending with just the right amount of marital difficulty to make him interestingly troubled, and there is a flicker of a sexual spark between him and his junior colleague, Helen. Both he and Helen are pressurised, mildly, by their inferior superiors. Bryan’s sister is a journalist, and can advance the investigation through her useful contacts in the media; inevitably, she and Helen, as joint female protagonists, become the victims of violence once the investigation is under way. And interspersed in Harvey’s narrative there are italicized excerpts from the lurid screenplay of a 1950s film whose star was the subject of bryan’s research. This is a nice twist on the now ubiquitous technique, which the crime writer Laura Wilson has wittily dubbed ‘serial killer’s italics’. There is even a mad woman , though in a fenland fastness, rather than an attic. Everything is just as it should be in a classic modern British crime novel.
Since Stephen Bryan is gay, the police begin by pursuing three lines of enquiry which all experienced crime readers will expect: was his brutal killer an insanely jealous lover, a misjudged casual pick-up, or a professional gay-basher? But another lead soon emerges: the subject of Bryan’s biography had a tragic past, and her family does not relish scandal being unearthed. Harvey’s plot suddenly takes off in several different directions: back through time into the family history of the film star; or into an unexpectedly entertaining urban subculture of hired thugs and dodgy business dealings; and deep into the private life of Bryan himself. The range of characters and settings is large, and Harvey’s touch is sure. The female characters are especially good, from the victim’s touching mother to the trash actress great-niece of the film star. All the threads are held in perfec t balance until the very end of the narrative, and Harvey makes doubly sure that every loose end has been tied up by having DI Grayson revisit ex-suspects once the culprit has been nailed.
Gone to Ground is a comforting book, in spite of a rather melodramatic end to one of the subplots. This is not only because of all those neat closures, but also because Harvey’s narrative contains many heart-warming decencies. Institutions can be relied upon. Police, husbands, journalists, academics and even trash actresses and property developers are presented as doing their best in a hard world. Even the murderer is contrite. More cynical and cold-hearted readers might wish for edgier story lines. In Harvey’s Britain, from Cambridge to the orkneys, while nasty things may once have happened, everything is now mostly under control, and nobody is all bad. One finishes the book with a sympathetic sigh rather than a shudder, unsurprised and not unsettled.
Heather O’Donoghue
Times Literary Supplement March 23 2007
Any new novel by John Harvey is cause for celebration. He produces beautifully written, solidly engineered crime stories that probe the flaws and sensitivities of British society. Gone to Ground begins with the murder of Stephen Bryan, a lecturer in media studies bludgeoned to death in theshower of his house in Cambridge. The narrative focuses on the investigations of two police officers and of Bryan's sister, a journalist.
The victim was homosexual, and the police are open to the possibility that either a former lover or a casual pick-up may have been responsible. But Bryan's laptop is missing, and another line of investigation leads to a book he was writing. This is a biography of Stella Leonard, a minor British film star of the1950s best known for her role in the noir thriller Shattered Glass.
Leonard's maverick great niece, herself an actress, is due to star in a remake, and fragments of film script are scattered through the text. Gone to Ground is a powerful novel with an unusual depth of characterisation, and it lingers in the mind after you've finished it.
Andrew Taylor, The Spectator May 2007
Men from Boys
Two stories from the collection MEN FROM BOYS have been nominated for the Best Short Story Dagger - Mark Billingham's 'Dancing Towards the Blade' and Don Winslow's 'Douggie Doughnuts
It began with a simple enough idea: a book which would collect together stories by those writers in the crime and mystery area whose work I respect, admire and enjoy most. Simple? Well, no. For one thing, the choice would be too vast, the book too large. But then, unbidden, the title leapt to mind. "Men from Boys". And once it was there, lodged in my brain, it wouldn't leave. It was - it is - a kind of statement, a declaration, but also, and crucially, it provided a focus and a theme.
It also had the effect of cutting the number of writers I might have approached by half. No McDermid, no Fyfield, no Stella Duffy; no Grafton, no Paretsky, no Julie Smith. No Alice Sebold. No Suzanne Berne.
Just men.
Men writing, for the most part, about what it is to be a man.
To succeed; to fail. To open one's eyes.
What the majority of the pieces in the collection address, some directly, others more tangentially, are issues of self-knowledge, of accepting - or denying - certain responsibilities. What does it mean to be a father? What does it mean to be a son? What does it mean to be a man?
And did I achieve my aim to include all of those male writers I revere? Of course not. No matter how many times I wrote and faxed, e-mailed and phoned, no matter how much pleading and cajoling I engaged in, there were some whose dance cards' for whatever reason, were regretfully too full. A pleasant diversionary party game might be to guess who these were. Just don't ask: I'll never tell.
But if all had accepted that would have simply meant a bigger book. There is no one here whose name I am not pleased and proud to include; no piece of work that has not earned its place.
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The men
Mark Billingham
Lawrence Block
Andrew Coburn
Michael Connelly
Jeffery Deaver
John Harvey
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Reginald Hill
Bill James
Dennis Lehane
Bill Moody
George P. Pelecanos
Peter Robinson
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James Sallis
John Straley
Brian Thompson
Don Winslow
Daniel Woodrell
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Blue Lightning
In 1998 I edited a collection of short fiction, all of which, in one way or another, was connected with music: blues, jazz, country, whatever. Mostly, but not exclusively crime writers, the contributors included Walter Mosley, Stella Duffy, Ian Rankin and the singer Rosanne Cash. Marcel Berlins, in The Times, selected it as his Pick of the Year for 1998.
Now officially out of print in its original Slow Dancer Press edition, this is a collection worth seeking out.
Anyone conversant with French, however, will be pleased to know that in September, 2002, Rivages published a handsome edition in translation, Bleu Noir.
The first John Harvey novel since the completion of the ten-strong Resnick/Nottingham sequence.
It was published in the UK by William Heinemann in October, 2001 and will be reissued as an Arrow
paperback in February, 2003.
It was published in the States as an Otto Penzler Book from Carroll & Graf in September, 2002.
US Paperback publication, Carroll & Graf, November 2003
In a True Light is set in London, New York and Northern Tuscany at the present time and in New York's Greenwich Village in the late 1950s. A crime novel, it is also a novel about painting and painters, about identity and belonging and accepting responsibility for ourselves and others. Oh, and there's some jazz thrown in.
The central character, Sloane, actually made his first appearance in the ninth Resnick novel, Still Water, where he has a walk-on part as a painter/forger. Something about him intrigued me and I wanted to find out more about him.
Hence In a True Light
Which begins like this
They let Sloane out of prison three days short of his sixtieth birthday. Three years for deception, reduced on appeal to two; six months in Brixton, the remainder in Ford open prison. Naturally lean and wiry, Sloane walked out through the gates a fitter man than when he'd first walked in. Afternoons spent working in the gardens, cultivating everything from camellias to purple sprouting broccoli, cutting back random shrubbery, building dry stone walls. Evenings, he had read, sketched, exercised in his cell. Though greying at the temples, his hair was still strong and full, his eyes clear and disconcertingly blue. Strong cheekbones and lightly weathered skin. Inside, he had elected to keep himself to himself and few, fellow prisoners or guards, had tried to change his mind.
Now he stood at the centre of Waterloo Bridge, the river running broad and free beneath him. To his left, St. Paul's and the City; to his right, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben. The sun pale in a blue-grey sky and the air bright with the bite and promise of spring. That morning he had walked along the Embankment from London Bridge, Blackfriars to Waterloo Station, words and music to an old song by the Kinks accompanying him. Walked slowly, taking it all in. Open prison or not, prison was what it had been; what liberties they had allowed him, small and illusory.
Sloane breathed deeply, stretched both arms wide and, the beginnings of a smile bright in his eyes, set off for the north side of the Thames.
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A Novel of Crime
The English novelist John Harvey won exceptional praise for his novels about Nottingham detective Charlie Resnick. He was awarded the first Sherlock award for the best detective series by a British writer. The London Times included the first Resnick novel, "Lonely Hearts," on its list of the hundred best crime novels. Here in the Colonies, Elmore Leonard compared Harvey's work to that of Graham Greene.
Nonetheless, Harvey announced three years ago that the 10th Resnick saga was the last, now with "In a True Light," he gives us his first post-Resnick novel, and it is a gem. After 10 novels in Nottingham, Harvey must have hungered for new worlds to conquer, and indeed this one is set in London, New York and Tuscany, all brought lovingly to life.
The story is perfectly serviceable, but it is the telling that delights. Harvey is an elegant, understated writer who loves jazz and painting. Readers of a certain age will savor his flashbacks to New York in the 50s, as when athe lovers meet at the Five Spot, where Thelonius Monk and John Coltrane are performing:"Monk's foot, his right foot, skewed wide and stomping down, punctuating the broken line as, stationed in the piano's curve, the bassist, eyes closed feels for his underlying pulse."
Jackson Pollock turns up drunk in a Village bar, looking for a man to fight or woman to bed. The lovers attend aa party at thepoet Frank O'Hara's apartment, and their host, seeing Jane, "broke off his peroration to Orpheus and Eurydice to wrap her in a quick, warm embrace." When Sloane reads to someone in a hospital, he chooses early Hemingway, one of the Nick Adams stories. Billie Holiday's music floats in the background of the novel. Harvey clearly feels an affinity with artists like Monk, Holiday and Hemingway, artists of precision and immaculate taste.
In one scene, Harvey devotes two pages to Sloane at work in his studio. A sample: " Only when he was satisified he had the right shade did he reach for a fine sable-tipped brush and, after stepping back to judge he necessary balance with the existing smudge of gray, make the first fresh mark, a curve of violet tapering away, the size and shape of a feather on a magpie's wing, the shade of skin seen by certain eyes in failing light."
There were moments in this amazing digression when I wondered, "What about the gangster?" But Harvey is like a jazz artist, far out on an improvisational limb, who can suddenly, deftly tie everything together. "In a true Light" is a rare example of crime embellished by art, the crime novel as art. Yet be warned: this tale is muted. No one is trying to bring down the government or blow up the world. In automotive terms, Harvey is a classic Porsche that can run circles round the gargantuan SUVs that too many thrillers are today. Climb aboard. You'll feel the wind in your hair.
Patrick Anderson The Washington Post
"We've had to wait far too long for a new novel from John Harvey, whose Charlie Resnick series, concluded in 1999 after 10 installments, helped redefine the British procedural.
Harvey jumps between Sloane in the present, forced to reengage with life in order to help his daughter, and Sloane in the past, a young painter in the Village, falling in love with Connie's mother, hearing Monk at the Five Spot, letting the full force of bohemian culture at its zenith wash over him. This is not one of those overly intellectualized art mysteries in which Renaissance paintings contain elaborate puzzles; rather, it is a streetwise, savvy thriller that uses the energy of modern art, not it's peripheral pretensions, to tell a complex story of emtional rebirth. A surprising and immensely satisfying return to crime fiction for one of the genre's true modern master's."
Bill Ott
Booklist
British author Harvey (Lonely Hearts and others in this Charlie Resnick detective series) offers the stuff noirs are made on in this stand-alone: mean streets and shattered dreams; heartfelt jazz and smoke-filled rooms; lonely people in sleezy bars; the harmless, and the harmful who prey on them; a world in which violence is mindless; brutal and inevitable.
The reader really comes to care about the tragic and compelling Sloane, whose efforts to fill his unexpected father role lead him into all sorts of trouble. While the plot might have been stronger than Sloane acted without the help of Vargas and Cherry, this dark and dazzling tale of crime and redemption can only enhance Harvey's reputation.
Forecast: Blurbs from such heavyweights as Michael Connelly, Jonathan Kellerman and George P.Pelecanos should reinforce Harvey's bona fides for American hard-boiled fans. The author has won the Sherlock Award for the best detective created by a British author. This one's a likelycandidate for award nomination on both sides of the Atlantic.
Publishers Weekly
"Charlie Resnick chronicler Harvey (Now's the time, 1999 etc.) does a beautiful job in evoking New York still alive with echoes of Sloane's magical year with Jane. But he's less convincing when he turns from asking how Sloane - with or without the help of the two NYPD detectives getting on Delaney's case - will succeed in separating Connie from her baleful protector than in suggesting what kind of future the unlikely father-daughter duo will have.
Except for the forgivably formulaic windup, a lovely jazzy noir tale of two cities."
Kirkus Reviews
Michael Connelly
Jonathan Kellerman
George P. Pelecanos
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I'd been thinking about Kiley for a while, had him nudging around the edges of my brain without ever knowing
too much about him, not even his name · then a commission came in from Otto Penzler in New York to write
a story which involved both crime and tennis for a collection called MURDER IS MY RACQUET. And somewhere between Christmas 2000 and New Year 2001, a 5,000 plus word story called Promise, Jack Kiley appeared. I liked him so much, I sat back down almost immediately and wrote a second story, Truth, which will appear in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Then, a few months later, poet and novelist Joel Lane approached me to write a story for a new collection he's co-editing, BIRMINGHAM NOIR. And I came up with Smile. Others, thankfully, have followed.
Promise, to be published in the US in Murder is my Racquet, edited by Otto Penzler (Mysterious Press, June 2005).
Truth, published in the US in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2002
Smile, published in the UK in Birmingham Noir, edited by Joel Lane & Steven Bishop (Tindal Street Press, October, 2002)
Chance, published in the UK in Men from Boys, edited by John Harvey (Heinemann, November, 2003). Reprinted in THE BEST BRITISH MYSTERIES 2005, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Allison & Busby, 2005).
Favour, to be published Like a Charm, edited by Karin Slaughter, (Century, UK, February, 2004; Morrow, US, 2004)
Asylum, to be published in CRIME ON THE MOVE, the CWA anthology edited by Martin Edwards, (The Do-Not Press, 2005).
But now, so as to give you an introduction, a taste, here are two extracts from the first story ·
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The way it would usually be: Kiley would be in the pub enjoying a quiet drink when someone would walk over to him or intercept him on his way to the bar. "Excuse me, but aren't you
that bloke ·" And then it would start and Kiley would nod and grin and hear it all again,
some blurred version of it anyway, before signing whatever scrap of paper was within reach
and shaking hands. "Always wondered what happened to you."
Well, now they knew ·
Jack Kiley at forty. A tall man with a barely discernible limp as he carried his pint of
Worthington back to his corner table. The face fuller now, the hair as thick, though touched
with grey; the eyes a safer shade of blue. His body softer, but not soft, some fifteen pounds
heavier than when he came from nowhere to score that hat trick in extra time. The F.A. Cup
Quarter Final, 1989. A staple of pub quizzes throughout the land. Which non-league player,
coming on as a substitute in extra time, scored a hat trick in · But by then buzzers had
sounded, arms had been raised. Jack Kiley, who else?
And this, later on in the story ·
Kiley was alone in his office, August 3rd. Two rooms above a book shop in Belsize Park. A
bathroom he shared with the financial consultant whose office was on the upper floor.
"So what d'you think?" Kate had asked him the first time they'd looked round. "Perfect,
no?" Kate having been tipped off by her friend, Lauren, who managed the shop below.
"Perfect, maybe. But rents in this part of London · There's no way I could afford it."
"Jack!"
"It's all I can do to keep up with the payments on the flat."
"Then let it go."
"What?"
"The flat, let it go."
Kiley had stared around. "And live here?"
"No, fool. Move in with me."
So now Kiley's name was there in neat lettering, upper and lower case, on the glass of the
outer door. The office chair behind the glass-topped desk was angled round, suggesting his
secretary had just popped out and would be back. As she might, were she to exist. In her
stead, there was Irena, a young Romanian who waited on tables across the street at Café Pasta,
and two mornings a week did Kiley's filing for him, a little basic word processing, talked to
him of the squares and avenues of Bucharest, excursions to the Black Sea, of storks that nested
by the sides of country roads.
In Kiley's inner sanctum were a smaller desk, oak-faced, an easy chair, a couch on which he
sometimes napped, a radio, a TV whose screen he could span with one outstretched hand.
There was a plant, jasmine, tiny white flowers amongst a plethora of glossed green leaves; a
barely troubled bottle of single malt; a framed print Kate had presented him with when he
moved in: two broad bands of cream resting across a field of mottled grey, the lines between
hand drawn and slightly wavering.
"It'll grow on you," she'd said.
He was still waiting.
And finally this comes from an early, longer version of "Promise", written when I was trying to figure out some
of the details of his past for myself · in the shorter, later version, the soccer is cut right back!
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Kiley had been a police officer at the time, a detective in the Met, CID. Seven years in. He'd
never stopped playing soccer since he was a kid. Turned out for the Force, of course he did.
And as an amateur, without contract, for a string of semi-pro clubs, Kidderminster Harriers,
Canvey Island, Gravesend. When Stevenage Borough in the Conference came in for him,
needing cover for an injured striker, an understanding Detective Superintendent cleared his
rota for most Saturdays in the season, only for him to spend the best part of each game on the
bench, waiting to be thrown on in the dying stages — "Go get 'em, Jack. Show 'em what you
can do." — Clogging through the churned up mud in search of an equalising goal.
Each year the Cup threw up its giant killer, a team from the lower reaches riding their
luck and ground advantage to harry and chase the top pros with their fancy boots and pony
tails and trophy wives, each earning more in a month than Kiley's team would graft in a brace
of years. And in eighty nine it was Stevenage, a home draw against the Villa promising them a
place in the last four. One-all at the end of the ninety and five minutes into extra time, Kiley,
frustrated and cold inside his track suit, got the call. "Go get 'em, Jack." With his first touch
he played the ball straight into the path of the opposing centre half, the second slid beneath
his boot and skidded out of touch; his third, a rising shot struck full off the meat of the right
boot on the run, swerved high and wide past the goalie's outstretched hand and Kiley's side
were in the lead, nineteen minutes to go.
From the restart, Villa forced first one corner, then another, finally bundling the ball over
line just before the final change of ends.
2:2.
Fifteen minutes plus injury time to play.
With seven of those minutes gone, one of the Stevenage men brought down a Villa forward
inside the box and the resulting penalty was stroked smoothly home.
2:3.
Kiley received a pass with his back to the goal, his marker crowding in on him, all elbows
and knees; using his strength to hold him off, Kiley swung the ball back out to the right,
swerved left and ran for the box. This time the return pass held up on the turf, forcing him to
check back and take it on his left foot, not his best, the goalkeeper coming out, spreading
himself, and Kiley, not willing to risk a shot too soon, suddenly found himself between the
onrushing goalie and two defenders closing fast. In the seconds before all three crashed into
him and sent him somersaulting wide, he toe poked the ball past the keeper's flailing hand
with just enough force for it to cross the line in-off the post.
3:3.
Four minutes plus injury time remaining.
"I suppose you think that makes you fuckin' clever, you useless tosser." Kiley's marker
clattered against him as they manoeuvred on the edge of the centre circle, waiting for the
home goalie to clear upfield. "Cause you're not, you're fuckin' shite!" And as the ball arced
away towards the left wing, unobserved, he elbowed Kiley in the kidneys and left him face
down in the dirt.
Which is why Kiley was unmarked, moments later, when the ball came ballooning towards
him out of the Villa defence, Kiley thirty yards from goal, open space in front of him and then
a ruck of players, and he met it on the half-volley, sweet like driving a passing shot down the
line on Centre Court, or pulling a six head-high to the boundary at Lords, that rare and
perfect combination of technique and relaxation, and he knew, even before the roar of the
crowd or the sight of his own players cartwheeling in pleasure, that he had scored.
4:3.
At the final whistle, with the home crowd chanting his name, his marker sought him out,
and with a toothless grin, threw an arm around his shoulder. "No hard feelings, eh?" And
when Kiley looked back at him. "Swop shirts, then? What'd you say?"
Kiley nodded and waited till the player had lifted his arms above his head. And punched
him once, a short right to the ribs that dropped the man, breathless, to his knees.
The referee red carded him for that, which meant Kiley was ineligible for the semi-final,
which they lost 7:1 to Liverpool, a necessary corrective to their uppity behaviour. In
professional soccer, each giant killer—so valuable for filling column inches and the turnstiles
both—is only allowed so many sacrificial giants.
For Kiley, though, fame lingered on, his hat trick the stuff of innumerable sports show
repeats, and it was no surprise when someone offered him the chance to turn professional a
few months short of twenty nine. The manager of Charlton Athletic had something of a
reputation for making silk purses from sow's ears, turning grit into gold. And Kiley knew it
was the only chance he would get. With perhaps too few second thoughts, he resigned from
the Met.
But most of his first season was spent in the reserves or on the bench: in all he made three
first team starts, scored once. The following summer he trained hard, determined; played in
all three pre-season friendlies, looking sharp; in the first league game he hit a volley from
twenty-five yards that slammed against the bar, narrowly missed with a diving header inside
the box. The second game, away, he was stretching for a ball that was never really his when
the tackle came in, two-footed, late, and broke his leg. Some legs, young legs, mend. After two
operations, rest, light-training, lots of physio, Kiley called it a day. The club were more
generous than many, the insurance settlement better than he might have hoped. For months
he did little or nothing, left books half read, watched afternoon movies, moped. Considered a
civilian job with the Met. Then a former colleague from the Force offered him work with the
security firm he was running. "No uniform, Jack. No bullshit. Just wear a suit, look large and
smile." For the best part of three years, he was a paid bodyguard to B list celebrities, obscure
overseas royals, sports personalities and their hangers-on..
At Wimbledon, Kiley found himself sharing overpriced strawberries and champagne with
Adrian Costain, a sports agent he'd brushed up against a few times in his soccer days, and
when Costain rang him a week later with the offer of some private work, he thought, why not?
So here he was, ten years down the line from his twenty-five minutes of fame, a private
investigator with an office, a computer, pager, fax and phone; a small but growing clientele, a
backlog of successfully resolved, mostly sports-associated cases.
Jack Kiley, whatever happened to him?
Well, now you know.
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Drummer Unknown , published in the US in MURDER … AND ALL THAT JAZZ, edited by Robert J. Randisi (Signet, 2004).
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