While not quite as satisfying as one of the novels, this was an enjoyable change of pace.

The Harpur and Iles books are like chapters in a much larger book—A Dance to the Music of Crime is how I think of it, especially since James has some kind of critical work on Anthony Powell in his bibliography (not under the James pseudonymn, though)—and the Harpur and Iles stories here could easily have been chapters in one of the individual books.

The title piece is a full-strength distillation of the relationships, themes, with and irony that suffuse the series. Iles rants about his wife's affair with Harpur, Harpur worries that Iles might lose control at a funeral, the conversation between the two has the high/low seesaw of Jeeves and Wooster, recurring words such as "symbolic" and "encapsulates" serve as bits of comedic business that simultaneously support the structure of the story. It's a Harpur and Iles book in miniature.

In "For Information Only", we hear from an informant in the world of Harpur and Iles, not Harpur's informant, Jack Lamb, but another one, whose knowledge isn't actually desired by the police. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"Free Enterprise" turns our attention to Ralph Ember and Mansel Shale, the two main drug dealers on Harpur and Iles's patch, who have an understanding with Iles that they'll be allowed to control the drugs trade—there will always be a drugs trade—as long as they can keep peace, more or less, on the streets. The invasion into the turf by East European crime gangs is threatening this arrangement, as it has done for several novels now, and this story, a comedy of manners and language, is like a one-act play centered on this conflict.

Jack Lamb appears in "Rendezvous One", in response to an emergency regarding an undercover officer that Harpur has installed with one of the local drugs gangs, very much unofficially and absolutely against Iles's orders. A last-minute rescue operation goes into effect and, naturally, ends up involving Iles anyway.

The other stories include, well, a poem, actually, called "Going Straight", a first-person narrative of an ex-con working as a waiter. It's sensitive and amusing as well as bittersweet.

"Elsewhere" is a delirious story that's sort of about phone sex and left me in amazement that James actually came up with this idea in the first place. It dazzles and dances on the edge of the surreal but has a disappointing ending.

There are two World War 2 stories. "War Crime" is a reminiscence of an elderly woman, about dual romances she had as a teenager with a boy from London and an older Italian POW. As usual, the comedy, drama and intrigue come from the human tendency to rationalize, equivocate and self-mythologize.

The other one, "A Bit of Eternity", involves a murder in an air-raid shelter during a bombing run by the Germans. The concern shown to this one, small murder in the midst of a huge, noisy mass murder, is quaintly ironic, which is clearly part of the point.

The academic approach to crime fiction is lampooned in "Body Langauge", references Philip Marlowe and, perhaps, in its name dropping of "The Faerie Queene", Robert B. Parker's Spenser. A university professor teaching a course in crime fiction has an actual murder occur in his classroom, in front of his students, giving them the opportunity to apply what they've learned about crime fiction to a real-life crime. The title itself is a joke and the whole story is a sustained witticism.

"Fancy" was a misfire, an unsuccesful attempt at a one-joke short story about men wishing to be mistaken for a serial rapist. This one should have just been left out of the collection.

A story about suburban adultery, "Big City" is well done and notable for several memorable phrases: "aperitified people", "secrecy above hygiene". It's a good companion piece to "Elsewhere".

The most mysterious story in this collection is "At Home", which is told entirely in letters. At first it seems to be a fairly clear account of a woman whose husband is insanely violent and abusive. When it switches to letters written by the husband, the reader can no longer be certain. Oblique references to hedge clippers and weekend orgies simply make things less clear but more exciting.

Finally there's a long police procedural story, "Emergency Services", about a young, low-ranked, female police officer whose investigation of the murder of a possible informant leads her into high-level crime and corruption. This one feels like it could take place in the Harpur and Iles world but there are no cross-over characters or places. It's a great read, very well done, and I wouldn't mind spending more time with Detective Constable Helen Baring.