Dead Man’s Time

Premium Pulp Fiction, the Perfect Airport Read

Dead Man’s Time by Peter James is the ninth instalment of the ever-increasing Roy Grace series.

Plenty of action, detail and a plot that shores up the characters.

Synopsis

Late one winter evening in 1922, four drunks crept into a house on the Brooklyn waterfront. They shot a young mother and bundled a man into the street, never to be seen again. They left behind them two small children.

Ninety years later, one of the children, now an old lady, is burgled and beaten to death in her mansion in a well-to-do area of Brighton. The robbers make off with several million pounds worth of antiques and a Patek Philippe pocket watch, a family heirloom. The watch had belonged to her father, the man who disappeared all those years ago. The victim’s brother is distraught. He decides to take matters into his own hands whilst the investigating officer, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, struggles to make headway.

What follows is a tale of murder and revenge, crossing 90 years and two continents as an old man sets out to avenge his sister.

Review

Peter James has turned out another fast-moving pulp thriller. The chapters are short, snappy and brim full of sex, violence, revenge and drama. Each ends with a good old-fashioned cliffhanger that will draw you into the next.

James exerts a considerable amount of effort researching his books. He has close relationships with the Brighton police, which helps keep his tales technically accurate. This shines through in his insights into the shadier sides of the world of antiques, which are well-drawn and compelling.

Whilst his plot is titillating, and the technicalities are convincing, James’ characterisation is elementary. As one critic put it, “Peter James? More like Peter and Jane.” James’s world is one-dimensional. His lead character — Detective Superintendent Roy Grace — is flat-footed (but pleasant), and the plot is morally correct. The baddies, goodies and loveable rogues all get what they deserve.

But I shouldn’t knock James’s writing. As another critic said, “James’s writing is sleek and easy to absorb, and at the same time, it’s not intimidating”. This explains why Peter James has sold twenty-one million books, and I (and probably you) have not.

Like chewing gum and youtube, this is the sort of thing I claim I didn’t enjoy, though the rate at which the pages turned tells another story. Peter James could become my next guilty secret.

Excerpt

From a distance, the man cut a dash. He looked smarter than the usual Brighton seafront crowds in their gaudy beachwear, sandals, flip-flops and Crocs. A gent, with an aloof air, in a blue blazer with silver buttons, smartly pressed slacks, open neck shirt and a natty cravat. It was only on closer inspection you could see the shirt collar was frayed, there were moth holes in the blazer, and his slicked-back hair was thinning and a gingery-grey colour from bad dying. His face looked frayed, too, with the pallor that comes from prison life and takes a long time to shake off. His expression was mean, and despite his diminutive stature — five foot three in his elevated Cuban-heeled boots — he strutted along with an air of insouciance, as if he owned the promenade.

Behind his sunglasses, Amis Smallbone, on his morning constitutional, looked around with hatred. He hated everything. The pleasant warmth of this late June morning. Cyclists who pinged their bells at him as he strayed onto the cycle lane. Stupid grockles with their fat, raw skin burning in the sun, stuffing their faces with rubbish. Young lovers, hand-in-hand, with their lives ahead of them.

Unlike him.

He had hated prison. Hated the other inmates even more than the officers. He might have been a player in this city once, but that had all fallen apart when he’d been sent down. He hadn’t even been able to get any traction on the lucrative drugs market in the jails he had been held in.

And now he was out, on license, he was hating his freedom too.

Dead Man’s Time by Peter James