Disclosures

Ralph Ember, local crook and long-running series character, takes center stage in James’s amusing 32nd mystery featuring Asst. Chief Constable Desmond Iles and Chief Supt. Colin Harpur (after 2013’s Play Dead). Ember and cop Esther Davidson reminisce about Ember’s entry into the drug trade in southeast London when he was a “yucker” (new boy) with the Pasque Uno firm, which was due to shoot it out with the Opal Render firm. The two gangs were met by a well-informed, well-armed police team led by Davidson, an encounter from which Ember got the nicknames that endlessly plague him—Panicking Ralph, or worse, Panicking Ralphy. Iles and Harpur play relatively minor parts until an unplanned and unexpected meeting of the principals takes place at Ralph’s social club, the Monty. It is fitting that both Davidson and Ember obsess over the event that had such a profound effect on their lives, and James has great fun playing variations on the way they remember it. Agent: Euan Thorneycroft, A.M. Heath (U.K.). (Dec.)