Recently Mark Sullivan asked:
"if anyone could recommend other authors I should pick up
there that I
can't find in the States."
Great Britain has a number of police officers who write
excellent police
procedurals. While this is a comparatively recent phenomenon
in the
States (dating roughly from Dorothy Uhnak and Joe Wambaugh in
the late 60s
and early 70s, though there were earlier examples), in the UK
it goes all
the way back to the 20s and 30s with writers like Basil
Thomson and
Maurice Proctor. Great Britain's best (in fact, probably the
Planet
Earth's best) cop-novelist is John Wainwright, who retired
from the
Country Constabulary of Yorkshire's West Riding, and whose
stories are set
in a fictionalized West Riding called "Lessford County Area."
Roughly
half his books are unavailable in the States. Wainwright is
extremely
prolific, and he doesn't belt one out of the park every time
he steps to
the plate, but at his best he's brilliant, and I consider his
*All on a
Summer's Day* one of the 4 or 5 best cop novels ever written.
Very tough,
unflinching stuff.
Peter Walker, another North England copper, is best-known in
this country
as Nicholas Rhea, the author of a series of gentle short
stories about a
rural beat cop in the English Hinterlands, *Constable on the
Hill*, etc.,
sort of to law enforcement what *All Creatures* is to
veterinary medicine.
Under his own name and other pseudonyms (i.e. Christopher
Coram, et al)
he's considerably tougher. Except for the Rhea books, a few
non-fiction
books, and a few articles, he's virtually unknown in the
States.
Jonathan Ross is a little better knwon on this side of the
pond than
Walker, but some of his earliest books are not available in
the states.
Finally, the best and toughest espionage writer of them all,
Adam Hall,
left behind one posthumous Quiller novel. The title escapes
me, but it
has to do with Russion organized crime in Moscow. It's been
published in
the UK, but, to my irritation, never in the US. - Jim
Doherty
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