 James is, by my book, the best British crime writer in the business. And this novel is as funny, savage, satirical and satisfying as any of his previous novels. He’s as inventive, both stylistically and structurally, and as iconoclastic as ever, the very antithesis of a formulaic writer.
Reviewed by P.P.O. Kane
I Am Gold
By Bill James
Constable, November 2010
ISBN: 9781849014915
This, the umpteenth novel in Bill James’s Harpur and Iles series, reads like an episode of The Sopranos transposed to Middle England.
It is about a gangland hit that goes disastrously wrong: innocents have died and the killer has fled to a charity shop. Hostages are held and there is a siege in progress.
The novel flips back and forth from the time of the killing to about two years previously, but a motive for the murders (answers to the question, ‘Why?’) is uncertain right up to the end. The hit man may even have got his intended victim. Now an answer to the question, ‘Who did it?’, that is forthcoming, to some extent at least. It was a mercenary, one of those ‘contract-killer’ monkeys.
James is, by my book, the best British crime writer in the business. And this novel is as funny, savage, satirical and satisfying as any of his previous novels. He’s as inventive, both stylistically and structurally, and as iconoclastic as ever, the very antithesis of a formulaic writer.
What’s terrific about I am Gold in particular is the way he conveys the voice of Manse, his crime boss: plenty of bluster and pretentiousness, yes, but there’s also real emotion in there somewhere. And Iles, James’s gem of a police officer, is as much of a maverick as ever.
A very fine novel.
About the reviewer: P.P.O. Kane lives and works in Manchester, England. He welcomes responses to his reviews and you can reach him at ludic@europe.com
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