If anything is guaranteed to get decent, law-abiding townsfolk out of their nice cosy houses and onto the streets in protest,
it’s the news that there’s going to be a nuclear power station opening up on their doorstep. Factor into the equation that this is the late 1980s, that the town in question is the north of England, and that the person insisting it’ll do the area nothing but good is a condescending, female Conservative M.P. from the Home Counties, and you’ve the makings of a full-scale riot on your hands. Which is exactly what Chief Inspector Alan Banks finds himself having to deal with, having left the crime-ridden streets of London for what he thought was the peace and quiet of Eastvale in Yorkshire. Whoever told him that life would be less stressful up here was having him on.
With Eastvale’s narrow streets swollen by bottle-throwing protesters (the whole town seems to have turned out for this one) and a thick blue line bolstered by truncheon-happy draftees from neighbouring forces, it isn’t long before the demonstration turns ugly, and in scenes reminiscent of the battlefields of Toxteth and Brixton, it’s the boys in blue who come off worst, with one of their number falling victim to a fatal stabbing. It’s thought to be a tragic accident at first, but once the
investigation gets under way, it seems increasingly likely that PC Edwin Gill was deliberately murdered. With practically half the town as suspects and no knife to be found, tracking down the killer isn’t going to be easy, and Banks’ enthusiasm is further dampened when he learns that ex-colleague Richard Burgess is being sent up from London to take charge of the case.
Now, if anybody secretly hankers after the days when men were men and fictional policemen were happy to do whatever it took to ‘get a result’ – not always within the strict letter of the law - then Superintendent Burgess is going to feature very highly in their estimation. He doesn’t believe in the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ theory – with him it’s invariably the other way around - and anybody old enough to remember the scene from The Sweeney where Jack Regan, sporting little more than a police constable’s helmet, persuaded a young lady to help him with his enquiries will have no difficulty in working out how Burgess came by the nickname “Dirty Dick”. This man is
chauvinism personified; a bigot of the highest (or should that be lowest?) order; a complete and utter dinosaur, with few endearing qualities to speak of.
But whether you admire or despise him, he does at least bring some colour to the proceedings, which is more than can be said for our wet week of a hero, Banks, whose idea of excitement is a night in with a glass of Scotch and a Reverend Robert Wilkins cassette tape. It’s no wonder his wife has taken the kids with her to London to look after her sick father, seemingly in no great rush to come home; she’s probably half hoping he’ll go off with police psychologist Jenny Fuller in her absence, but the closest he gets to that little scenario is to upset her by quizzing her activist boyfriend about his movements on the night of the murder; so no luck there Mrs Banks, I’m afraid.
So while Burgess is off searching for reds under the bed and any obliging redheads who might care to join him in one, it’s left for Banks to unruffle the feathers of the locals upset by his superior’s bully-boy methods, in particular the residents of a nearby farmhouse, a group of one-time political activists now living commune-style in apparent respectability and conformity. But even Banks has to agree that at least one of them knows more than they’re letting on, and so Maggie’s Farm becomes the focal point of the investigation, if you discount the local pub, of course, where Burgess spends most of his time.
For all the book’s datedness and clichéd references to yuppies, militant tendencies and so on, the underlying plot isn’t at all bad, in fact; a good old fashioned, methodical police investigation with all the necessary red herrings and garden paths to keep you off the scent until the last possible moment when everything falls into place. It’s not particularly challenging to read, being written in an easy, everyday style, but that does at least mean that you can keep up with what’s happening without having to backtrack constantly in order to remember who said or did what, and there’s no danger of getting bogged down with reams of descriptive narrative. In all honesty, I can’t see the book appealing to many people under thirty, chiefly because of the era in which it’s set – you probably need to have been living in Britain in the Eighties to appreciate fully the references to the social behaviour and events of the time – but older readers, once they’ve put aside any loathing for the boorish Burgess, might even get a few laughs at his expense. Alternatively, there’s always the possibility that some might just rue the passing of an era free from political correctness and restrictive practices: I’ll leave you to make your own choices there.