Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
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2013 March 01 • Friday

I Am Gold is the 27th book in the Harpur & Iles series by James Tucker writing as Bill James. The first line is "One of the notable things about Iles was he'd get very upset at the death of any child, but especially a child who'd been shot".

Colin Harpur and Desmond Iles are two police officers of high rank and two of the most unusual characters in crime fiction. Iles is second in command on the police force and Harpur is under him. Harpur is a decent person, on the side of the angels, as the harp in his name might suggest, though he hardly plays by the rules or always tells the truth. In Bill James's world, that would be suicide. His house is on Arthur Street, a detail which might propose that we see him as a knightly sort, doing his best to adapt to challenging and confusing circumstances. He is described as looking like Rocky Marciano.

Iles is brilliant, handsome and a very smart dresser. He is also violent, cruel, sadistic and despotic, occasionally insane. These qualities are balanced by displays of genuine empathy and concern, making him a complex character who invites and rewards the reader's attention. Iles also becomes completely unhinged, screaming and frothing, when recalling that his wife had an adulterous affair with Harpur. Iles, for his part, had a disturbing interest in Harpur's 16-year-old daughter, who was, frighteningly enough, actually pleased by the attention.

Harpur and Iles's turf, an unnamed dock town that I imagine is modeled on Cardiff, is rather stable, owing to Iles's unofficial policy of allowing two local criminals, "Panicking" Ralph Ember and Mansel Shale, to control the illegal drugs trade in town. Should one or both of them die or be arrested, the power vacuum would suck in ambitious villains from London and elsewhere, setting off gang wars and resulting in blood on the streets. (This had already occurred prior to Iles's arrangement with Ember and Shale.)

This stability runs parallel with the books themselves, which, with the exception of In the Absence of Iles, the twenty-fifth novel in the series and a surprising and exciting departure form the usual form, for the last eight or nine years or so have been very similar and more like chapters in a much larger novel. (Perhaps this shows the influence of Anthony Powell, whose novels are the subject of a non-fiction work by Tucker.)

Despite the sex, violence and cursing, the Harpur & Iles series is similar to P. G. Wodehouses's Jeeves novels. The books tend to involve the same people in the same setting with the same predicaments. The real job of both Harpur and Jeeves is to control their masters. And James's writing is in the same way alive to language's potential for nuance and wit, particularly in certain kinds of dialogues.

Iles had never been a great one for comfort. On the whole, he preferred rage. Comfort could fuck up and water down rage. Naturally, Harpur had become a tireless expert on Iles's mood swings. He needed to be, in self-defence. 'I see myself as protean, Col,' Iles had said not long ago.

'This is a word with considerable promise, sir.'

'Meaning, capable of endless variety.'

'That's you to a T, sir. Or, because of the endless variety, you to a W or a J.'

'Protean from Proteus, a sea god in classical times, who could alter his shape as he wished.'

'Classical gods were so brilliant at that. One of my kids told me a god turned himself into a swan for a while — the whole thing, feathers, webbed feet, big wings, beak,' Harpur had said. 'Other gods wouldn't have recognized him — might have thrown him crusts.'

At some point in the series the voices of the characters took over what would otherwise be the authorial voice. When Mansel Shale is the feature of a chapter, the book "talks" as he does. When we're with Harpur, Harpur's level-headed and concerned voice guides the text.

I Am Gold begins in the aftermath of the murders of Mansel Shale's son, Laurent, and second wife, Naomi. They were shot while driving to Shale's children's school, Laurent's sister Matilda being the only survivor of the attack. The action cuts between the police siege of a charity shop where the gunman is holding hostages and Mansel's meeting and courtship of Naomi, which began two years earlier. As the past storyline gets closer to the present, the assumption that Mansel was the intended target becomes less certain.

On the second page Iles asks Harpur, 'Is it a mistake, Col?'. By the last page there will be as much of an answer as you get in these novels, but also a reminder—heartbreaking and devastatingly economical, the kind of genius-deft brushstroke James does so well—of how incomprehensibly tragic the death of a child is.