Bill James, Author . Free Press $45 (1008p) ISBN 978-0-684-80697-6
A premier baseball analyst and brand name, James (The Bill James Player Ratings Book, The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers) releases a revised edition of his 1985 classic, with expanded player and team histories and reconsidered commentary....
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Bill James, Author Free Press $17 (464p) ISBN 978-0-684-80088-2
James examines the history, politics and voting decisions surrounding the controversial elections to baseball's Hall of Fame. (Apr.)
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Mary A. Wirth, Author, Bill James, Author Villard Books $29.95 (721p) ISBN 978-0-394-53713-9
The national pastime's most eminent statistician and the author of the annual Bill James Baseball Abstract here brings his formidable background to a history of the game, a must for fans. He begins with a decade-by-decade survey from 1870 through...
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Bill James, Author Do-Not Press $14.95 (240p) ISBN 978-1-899344-95-6
Bill James offers a stand-alone, Middleman, the tawdry if wryly amusing tale of a small-time Welsh operator who runs into trouble when he agrees to help a crooked real-estate developer sell an expensive property on the Cardiff waterfront. James...
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Bill James, Author W. W. Norton & Company $22.95 (284p) ISBN 978-0-393-04761-5
In its last half-dozen titles, James's Harpur and Iles series has turned darker, concentrating on drug-related murders and betrayals. When an undercover officer named Raymond Street was killed several books ago, Assistant Chief Constable Desmond...
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Bill James, Author W. W. Norton & Company $22.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-393-04920-6
The last six books in James's Harpur & Iles series about a nameless city near London have been like one of those gigantic party sandwiches--they're stuffed with prime ingredients but it's hard to tell where one slice ends and another begins. James...
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Bill James, Author Foul Play Press $23 (204p) ISBN 978-0-393-04637-3
James's novels about British policeman Colin Harpur (Gospel; Astride a Grave; etc.) are as much about the failures of marriage and friendship as they are about crime. The latest--which begins with the murder of Harpur's wife, Megan, on her way home...
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Bill James, Author W. W. Norton & Company $23 (0p) ISBN 978-0-393-04718-9
Here's good news for James's fans: Norton seems to be publishing the author's British backlist at an ever-increasing pace. Six months after the appearance of his Roses, Roses, a PW Best Book of 1998 (originally published in Britain in 1993), comes a
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Bill James, Author Foul Play Press $22.95 (206p) ISBN 978-0-88150-383-8
Clever and complex, James's ninth police procedural featuring Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur explores the shadowy, dangerous world of ""grasses""--informers with one foot in the underworld, the other in the police camp and a precarious...
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Bill James, Author Foul Play Press $21 (0p) ISBN 978-0-88150-361-6
In James's world, the good guys--Detective Colin Harpur and his scheming, sarcastic superior officer, Desmond Iles--often seem more evil and lust-fixated than his bad guys, who here boast nicknames like Caring and Panicking. This follow-up to Take...
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Bill James, Author Foul Play Press $20 (223p) ISBN 978-0-88150-331-9
The death of a criminal ripples through lives on both sides of the law in this nervy, understated masterpiece of a procedural that only nominally stars British copper Colin Harpur. Suspects in the fatal bludgeoning of lowlife Ian Aston include his...
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Bill James, Author Foul Play Press $18.95 (188p) ISBN 978-0-88150-231-2
A well-preserved, months-old corpse found in a community college classroom poses an irresistible mystery for Penelope Spring and Sir Tobias Glendower, recently made a Dame and a baronet for saving the British prime minister's life (in The Catacomb...
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Bill James, Author St. Martin's Press $12.95 (157p) ISBN 978-0-312-89683-6
The seamy, precarious alliances between the English police and their informants""narcs''set the tone for this gritty novel. It's difficult to see who has the upper hand in the relationship between Detective Chief Superintendent Harpur, a seasoned...
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Bill James, Author MacMillan Publishing Company $25 (452p) ISBN 978-0-02-510774-8
James, the acknowledged authority on baseball statistics ( The Baseball Abstract ), discusses how players have been selected in the past and are chosen now for the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y. The Baseball Writers of America, which...
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Bill James, Author W. W. Norton & Company $20 (239p) ISBN 978-0-88150-294-7
Chance matters. So do stupidity, vanity, adultery and treachery. All are explored in this standout British thriller that traces a crime from both the cops' and robbers' angles. In the wonderfully real, amoral urban world of Detective Colin Harpur,...
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Bill James, Author W. W. Norton & Company $20 (256p) ISBN 978-0-88150-243-5
This vibrant, pulsating novel is the latest in a series of crisp procedurals which nominally feature British copper Colin Harpur, but which are often usurped by a colorful array of secondary characters, most especially Harpur's Macchiavellian...
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Bill James, Author Foul Play Press $17.95 (158p) ISBN 978-0-88150-198-8
Powerfully written, taut with suspense, the second outing featuring detective chief superintendent Colin Harpur ( You'd Better Believe It ) is not for the faint-hearted. Its plot, following the diabolical actions of a psychopath who rapes, tortures...
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If you're trying to read James's wonderfully mordant Harpur and Iles books in order, this one was originally published in England in 1998—between Top Banana
and Lovely Mover. That fact is important only to timeline purists, who keep...
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Bill James, Author Do-Not Press $31.95 (240p) ISBN 978-1-899344-96-3
Bill James offers a stand-alone, Middleman, the tawdry if wryly amusing tale of a small-time Welsh operator who runs into trouble when he agrees to help a crooked real-estate developer sell an expensive property on the Cardiff waterfront. James...
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Bill James, Author . Severn $28.95 (215p) ISBN 978-0-7278-6691-2
At the start of this run-of-the-mill contemporary police procedural from British veteran James, best known for his Harpur and Iles series (Easy Streets
, etc.), Det. Constable Sharon Mayfield spots the horribly disfigured corpse of Claude Huddart in
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Bill James, Author . Countryman $23.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-88150-780-5
In British author James's darkly humorous 23rd police procedural featuring Asst. Chief Constable Desmond Iles and DCS Colin Harpur, a turf war between local thugs and the Albanian mafia over the drug trade leads to several murders and an...
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Bill James, Author . Severn $27.95 (220p) ISBN 978-0-7278-6460-4
Best known for his long-running Harpur & Iles series, James again proves himself a sharp and subtle stylist in this scary psychological thriller based on the short story "At Home," from his collection The Sixth Man
(2006). The Carthage...
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Bill James, Author . Severn $27.95 (218p) ISBN 978-0-7278-6438-3
British author James (Wolves of Memories
) creates such memorable characters in his full-length mystery novels about Det. Chief Constable Colin Harpur and his immediate superior, Asst. Chief Constable Desmond Iles, who work in an unnamed British...
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Bill James, Author . Norton $23.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-393-06188-8
Starting a new Harpur & Iles mystery these days is like having lunch with a couple of smart and sardonic friends who don't quite get along. Over drinks, Asst. Chief Constable Desmond Iles of an unnamed English city—a vain and...
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Bill James, Author . Norton $23.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-393-06042-3
An ongoing gentleman's war between cops and local drug dealers takes a deadly turn when someone firebombs the house of a smalltime dealer in James's stellar new Harpur and Iles mystery (Panicking Ralph
, etc.). Is it one of the resident drug
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Bill James, Author . Norton $23.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-393-05855-0
Desmond Iles is in trouble, and that's enough to give a new jolt of energy to James's long-running series (Naked at the Window
, etc.) about the dapper, devious, demented Assistant Chief Constable of an unnamed British Midlands city and his...
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Bill James, Author . Norton $23.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-393-05198-8
The 19th entry in James's Harpur and Iles series (Pay Days, etc.) is padded, predictable and even occasionally plodding. What saves it is the author's ability to surprise and delight us with his language—a kind of powerful, deadpan...
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Bill James, Author . Severn $25.99 (256p) ISBN 978-0-7278-5824-5
The Bill James Book of the Month Club continues (last month's entry was Split, a valiant effort to revive the spy novel) with another worthy cause—a mystery about the way British police handle racially motivated crimes, which could have...
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Bill James, Author . Dufour/Do-Not Press $29.95 (222p) ISBN 978-1-899344-73-4
John le Carré and Len Deighton grabbed the British spy story by the scruff of its neck and gave it a vigorous shake in the 1960s, and James provides the same valuable service with this first installment in a new series about a mixed race...
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Bill James, Author . Norton $24 (256p) ISBN 978-0-393-04214-6
Everything comes apart in James's (Panicking Ralph) latest entry in the British procedural series, balanced, as usual, on the policing efforts of Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles and Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur on the one...
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While modern readers may not be familiar with the notorious Rhinelander trial of 1924, Lewis (dean of graduate studies at the University of Michigan) and Ardizzone (visiting assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame) offer a detailed...
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Bill James, Author, David Craig, Author . Severn $27.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-7278-6320-1
British veteran Craig, better known under his real name, Bill James, has crafted a cynical but engaging look at police corruption in his second procedural featuring Det. Constable Sally Bithron of the Cardiff police force (after 2005's Hear Me...
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Bill James, Author, Peter Gethers, Editor Villard Books $22.5 (0p) ISBN 978-0-394-57714-2
Known for his annual Baseball Abstract , James here puts aside his persona as a sabremetrician (read statistician) and presents excerpts from that publication and from his articles in Esquire . The book is divided into five sections, four of which...
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Bill James, Author . Countryman $23.95 (208p) ISBN 978-0-88150-882-6
Humor, dry and wry, distinguishes James's 24th police procedural to feature Det. Chief Supt. Colin Harpur and Asst. Chief Constable Desmond Iles (after 2007's Girls
). Harpur and Iles's criminal nemeses, Mansel Shale and Ralph Ember,...
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Bill James, Author . Countryman $23.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-88150-883-3
Asst. Chief Constable Esther Davidson takes center stage in James’s thoughtful, somewhat dry 25th Harpur & Iles mystery (after 2009’s Pix
). Frustrated by the failure of an extensive investigation into the affairs of a criminal gang...
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Bill James, Author . Severn $27.95 (187p) ISBN 978-0-7278-6813-8
Dodgy doings abound in James's ho-hum police procedural set in 1998 London, the prequel to Tip Top
(2006). When Det. Chief Supt. Esther Davidson investigates the shooting death of crime journalist Gervaise Manciple Tasker, she discovers from...
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Bill James. Severn/Crème de la Crime, $27.95 (208p) ISBN 978-1-78029-028-7
James’s tongue-in-cheek 30th mystery featuring Det. Chief Supt. Colin Harpur and Asst. Chief Constable Desmond Iles (after 2011’s Vacuum) takes the feuding pair to London to investigate a badly failed undercover operation conducted by another police
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Bill James. Severn/Creme de la Crime, $28.95 (208p) ISBN 978-1-78029-043-0
British author James’s entertaining 30th novel featuring Asst. Chief Constable Desmond Iles and Det. Chief Supt. Colin Harpur picks up where 2012’s Undercover left off as the oddly paired cops once again probe corruption in another jurisdiction’s...
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Bill James. Severn, $28.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-7278-8318-6
Best known for the Harpur and Iles procedural series (Play Dead, etc.), James spins an effective psychological tale of a man whose past shapes his future, despite efforts to carve his own path. In 1956, journalist Ian Charteris covers the possible...
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Bill James. Severn/Creme de la Crime, $28.95 (208p) ISBN 978-1-78029-065-2
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...
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Bill James. Severn/Crème de la Crime, $28.95 (192p) ISBN 978-1-78029-082-9
James’s diverting 35th mystery set in an unnamed English seaport (after 2015’s Blaze Away) finds the fragile equilibrium between the drug firms of crooks Ralph Ember and Manse Shale under pressure, while Asst. Chief Constable Desmond Iles and Det....
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Bill James. Severn, $28.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-7278-8686-6
If you haven’t read any of James’s Harpur and Iles mysteries set in a nameless British city, then plunging into the 34th entry (after 2016’s First Fix Your Alibi) may feel a bit like being parachuted into the middle of an Ionesco play. Be prepared...
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Bill James and Rachel McCarthy James. Scribner, $28 (480p) ISBN 978-1-4767-9625-3
Pioneering baseball analyst Bill James (he created the Sabermetrics statistical analysis system) successfully transfers his detail-oriented mind-set to true crime in this suspenseful historical account, cowritten with his daughter, Rachel McCarthy...
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Bill James. Severn, $28.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-7278-8866-2
Set in an unnamed English city, James’s stylish 35th mystery featuring Det. Chief Insp. Colin Harpur and his over-the-top and off-the-rails partner, Assist. Chief Constable Desmond Iles (after 2017’s Close), finds TV producers targeting Iles about...
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Bill James. Severn, $28.99 (192p) ISBN 978-1-4483-0572-8
The execution-style killing of a well-dressed stranger in the docklands of an unnamed English city fuels anxiety among cops and crooks alike in James’s uneven 36th police procedural featuring Det. Chief Supt. Colin Harpur and his eccentric superior,
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