London's Armed Police by Stephen Smith

 

This is really a review of two books because London’s Armed Police follows on from the author’s earlier title (albeit released by a different publisher) Stop! Armed Police!: Inside the Met’s Firearms Unit. 

The earlier title related the history of the Met’s firearms unit, from foundation through an exhaustive recounting of each and every shooting incident and the unit’s repeated reorganisation, up to the date of publication (2013). London’s Armed Police takes up the story, detailing shootings, incidents, and the unit’s reorganisation since. This truncated timeframe (the earlier title covered the period 1966 to 2013, while this book covers 2013 to 2019) allows the author much more space to detail the tactics, training and weapons of the unit (always mindful of course not to divulge confidential details).

The earlier title discussed tactics and weaponry too, but this latter title has much more on this and of course details the contemporary unit’s kit and procedures. Like the previous title, London’s Armed Police is gorgeously illustrated with dramatic colour photographs which bring what might otherwise be a technical manual to life. Similarly, photographs are used to illustrate the accounts of police shootings, though only where appropriate and there are no gratuitous pictures of bodies.

This is a non-fiction history but it is not a dry account and the author knows his subject and brings it to life. Readers will come to this from a variety of perspectives. For some, the appeal will be simple interest in the subject. For others like myself, it will be more reference. As a journalist and a writer of crime fiction, I have an interest in armed police operations. Whatever the readers' motivation, this is a readable and well laid out account of the Met police firearms unit and one that is sure to not disappoint.

5 out of 5 stars  

Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad by Dick Kirby

 

Dick Kirby is a retired Metropolitan police detective who spent a large part of his service with the Serious Crime Squad and the Flying Squad. He joined the police in 1967 and while he writes true crime prolifically, much of his writing focuses on historical crime, the period from the forties to the seventies. There’s nothing wrong with that, but generally, my interests are more contemporary. 

This book traces the history of the flying squad from its formation just after the first world war to the present day. Due to my interests, it was the latter half of the title that I was more interested in, the late 1970s/early 1980’s onwards. 

This section of the book is well told and in particular, I liked the detail on some lesser told tales, such as the armed operation to bring down the Arif brothers. At one time the Arifs were seen as contenders to the crown vacated by the Kray and Richardson gangs, and it was feared they would dominate London. They had a taste for armed robbery however and while other leading gangsters were moving into drugs importation, they continued robbing security vans. It was thanks to this that the Flying Squad was able to bring them to book.

While the Arif operation only occupies a few pages, better-known stories such as the Brinks Mat investigation, the Millennium Dome diamond heist and Hatton garden, as well as other lesser-known stories, proliferate. The more famous operations are discussed in greater detail in books dedicated to those events, but Kirby’s title doesn’t aim to do this and instead offers a brief account of how the flying squad contributed to the investigation.

I did read the earlier chapters, but as mentioned it was the latter half of the book which really held my interest and the author does a good job of collating and summarising the events detailed. All in all, this was an informative read.

3 out of 5 stars  

Vintage Crime edited by Martin Edwards

 

This is an anthology of short stories by authors who are members of the Crime Writers’ Association and published by Flame Tree Press. Unusually for anthologies, this is a celebration of crime writing down the ages and so the stories are taken from across a span of time, from classic to more contemporary.

 

The stories vary in length too and cover the full gamut of genre – spy thriller, through noir, to locked door mystery – and place, from London to Egypt. There are some distinctly weirder stories too. All in all, there’s a good range here, and this is a great read that you can dip into and out of.

 

This is a great selection of stories, well selected and put together. They’re included in date order (earliest to latest) but the reader has to refer to the notes at the back to know this. I quite liked that because it meant you came to the stories without any preconceptions (unless you flicked to the back to check first, of course).

 

A great read and highly recommended.

 

4 out of 5 stars

 

 

The Hunted by Gabriel Bergmoser

Simon is a middle-class young man who dreams of adventure and discovering the real, authentic Australia. He’s lived his life in comfortable suburbia and he wants to see the world as it is, outside of his privileged bubble. So he’s taken himself on a road trip, just him, driving across the outback. In a bar one night he meets Maggie, a young woman with secrets and a backpack full of cash. What she’s running from, or where she’s running to, is a mystery. Simon’s brain knows he should just walk away, but she’s attractive and his heart (or perhaps another part of his anatomy) stops him from doing so and he invites her along. 

They end up in a remote township (was it an accident? did Maggie lure Simon there?) and it is here that the novel takes a dark turn. I won’t give too much away, but this book has been compared to the horror films Wolf Creek and The Hills Have Eyes, so you kinda see where it’s going.

This is a novel told on two timelines which cross over somewhat. There’s before things go bad (the build-up), and then the after. In the latter, the survivors end up at a gas station run by Frank, a man with a past that might just rival Maggie’s. This is also a novel that’s demarcated almost straight down the fifty per cent mark. The first fifty-per cent of the novel is a slow, inexorable build-up of tension. This is achieved in both timelines, the before being the build-up, the after being the survivors at the gas station preparing for the final onslaught. Then at the fifty per cent mark, the author takes his foot off the brake in both timelines and utter mayhem ensues.

This is a brilliant, brilliant novel. It’s expertly plotted and crafted, while the characters have a real heft. In particular, Maggie, who’s akin to a female Rambo. Again, I’m wary of giving away spoilers, but this is one woman the bad guys will wish they had never crossed. 

I’m going to end this review before I give too much away, but I can’t recommend this book enough. If you like horror or thrillers, if you like a heroine who could give  Mad Max a run for his money, then this books is for you. 

5 out of 5 stars

 

To The Lions by Holly Watt

 

Casey Benedict is an investigative journalist at the Post, a broadsheet to rival the Times or Telegraph (the author is a former journalist who worked for The Telegraph). One night she overhears a conversation in a club which appears to indicate that rich and powerful men are travelling to somewhere in the third world to shoot refugees for sport. So begins her investigations. With her colleagues, Miranda and Ed, she finally firms up the story and locates it as occurring in Libya. They then have to try and get inside the network to expose it.

This is a novel that has been compared to Le Carré or Gerald Seymour, and I can see that comparison. It’s a story plucked from the headlines, at least as far as the refugee crisis is concerned (and the international corruption that goes with it) and could just as easily work with the protagonists being employed by the intelligence services. 

As it is, the author is a former foreign correspondent for the Telegraph and she clearly knows her stuff. I must declare an interest here, in that I too was a journalist for a good twenty years, albeit in current affairs television. While our paths never crossed (the author was a print journalist, while I was television production) I feel that we’re similar in having a love/hate relationship with our jobs. 

The author clearly believes in journalism at its best, and hence her heroes who save the day and expose dark deeds to sunlight are reporters. There’s perhaps a bit of wish fulfilment here as the Post has admirable funds, while the reality is that budgets aren’t what they once were. Finally, there’s a sense of disdain. Her hero Casey is willing to do whatever it takes to get the story, and while she's on the side of the angels (she’s no tabloid hack just after the latest celebrity tittle-tattle) she does grapple with the ethics of it and doesn’t always act admirably. I have a lot of sympathy with this, for I myself had similar conflicts of faith when working in television. Of course, this is all similar again to Le Carre and Seymore whose characters are often disgusted with the world of espionage and it’s grubby compromises.

To The Lions is a well-plotted novel and well worth a read. The author’s written a sequel and while the story in this novel is sown up for the most part, there are some satisfyingly unfinished threads. For example, not all the villains get their comeuppance. Personally, I don’t like a plot which ties up too neatly, so this is fine by me and I wonder if some of these will tick over into book number two?

4 out of 5 stars

Hinton Hollow Death Trip by Will Carver

Evil comes calling to the small town of Hinton Hollow, quite literally. It stalks the streets and visits the residents, infecting them, prodding their insecurities, nudging at their secrets and desires and coaxing out the malevolence suppressed within. It forces them to show their real selves and act in ways they might not otherwise. Except they might very well because the wickedness already resides deep down inside.

This is an unusual novel in that it is narrated by Evil itself, a dispassionate though omniscient narrator. Evil is frustrated with humanity, a reluctant actor whose actions are in direct relation to those of its subjects. If they are good, it can be proportionately so, its wickedness so much less. If they are bad, as they so often are, it must up the ante. Humans are bad, awfully so, and so Evil has no choice but to provoke the people it touches to ever greater depths of depravity

This novel follows on from the events of the author’s previous title, Nothing Important Happened Today, and Detective Pace who’s returned to his home town of Hinton Hollow from London features strongly. I have to confess that I hadn’t realised Nothing Important Happened Today was the second in the series, and Good Samaritan was a previous outing for Pace (so at some point I’ll have to read that novel). Pace is a flawed character who has done wrong through weakness despite his best efforts, and Evil torments him in Hinton Hollow Death Trip as a consequence.

Hinton Hollow Death Trip is not a book for the faint-hearted. This is a challenging read. While Evil does not infect children for they are too innocent, the adults it does can harm them and in Hinton Hollow they do. Whether it be a mother who in a shocking and devastating act fails her offspring, or the man who kills them to prove a twisted point, children suffer terribly within these pages. Animals, too, are innocent but all too often the victim of humanity’s aggression. This novel holds no punches. Children and animals are harmed within this story and while there’s none of the graphic violence and torture that there might be in some serial killer novels (though some of the shooting scenes are brutal) this is disturbing stuff.

This is a great book and an imaginative, in some ways almost experimental, read. It won't be to everyone’s taste, but it’s thought-provoking and original.

4 out of 5 stars