June 6, 11.24am
I somehow missed John Harvey. I don't really know why. For some reason the name Resnick - Charlie, Harvey's most famous creation - has always rung a bell or two (was he on tv?) but I'd never read him or seen it, and certainly had not heard of John Harvey.
His name first began to register during my twice-daily trips down the tube. At one stage earlier in the spring posters for his most recent paperback Ash and Bone, were all over the place. There's nothing unusual in that, the endless corridors of Tube has always been a rich source of ideas for films, books and music.
What was striking about the Harvey book however was the high quality of the plugs from fellow authors all over the posters. Now I am usually a little suspicious of this sort of flannel and always liked Lawrence Block's decision not get involved in it. It always seems to me to be a little cosy and a little "you scratch my back" etc. But the tributes on Harvey's books seemed different.
This is a little while ago now, so regrettably I can't remember who they were or what they said (although it may have been Michael Connelly and Mark Billingham) only that they appeared to set Harvey apart as something genuinely special and even standard-setting as far as they were concerned.
The drip-drip-drip effect of walking past these every day eventually produced the inevitable result: I bought Flesh and Blood (the first book in the Frank Elder series that preceded Ash and Bone) and promptly left the book in a draw for a month and forgot about it.
But the flannel was right, John Harvey is a bit special. By the time I eventually got down to Flesh and Blood, I flew through it in no time. And 24 hours after putting it down, I'd bought and finished the follow up Ash and Bone and already managed to get hold of a copy of the first of the dozen or so Resnick novels. (Isn't that just one of the best feelings? Finding an author you love and then discovering that he's prolific and another 15 books lie waiting).
What makes Harvey so good - to my mind - is firstly terrific writing, the books are incredibly readable. Secondly the plots are tight. While the novels are complex, they are handled with deft skill. At many points, Ash and Bone has at least two separate investigations/storylines running but Harvey works each of them through brilliantly, showing readers occasional glimpses of a greater sum of their various parts.
And finally I was just struck by their realism. In many ways these books are not dissimilar to Peter Robinson's Alan Banks series - even if Frank Elder is a retired cop rather than a working policeman, which means that technically they may not be procedurals, but effectively are. But perhaps because they are set in a real place - Nottingham - but perhaps not, they just feel a great deal more, well, probable. (And don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Robinson and Banks, I just think sometimes the books feel as if they are set in a sort of semi-rural northern theme park.)
Another key element of that is Elder himself. He's a bit of an oddity for a fictional detective. He's neither an alcoholic nor a womaniser, a maverick or a wisecracker. He doesn't appear to have any particularly damaging raging demons - he just sort of gets on with the job in hand, and is a terrific detective.
These are very very good books, a writer somewhere near the top of his field. I'm getting into the first Resnick now, and the first 30 or so pages are promising indeed.
So, if you haven't yet, try John Harvey. He's well worth it.
Reading
Lonely Hearts by John Harvey