The Sweeney 3

[fritzmaitland]

The Sweeney 3 : Regan And The Deal Of The Century - Ian Kennedy Martin. Futura 1976

Sheikh Abu Hasif died on the third floor of the Wellington Clinic in London on Monday 12th April 1976. His assassin emptied a whole clip from an M38 submachine gun into the man. It took off most of his head and right shoulder and left the bed headboard and part of the floor and walls reworked in technicolour.

Detective Inspector Jack Regan of the Flying Squad begins his investigation with a search for a group of mysterious murderers among the rich of Belgravia and the richer inhabitants of the high life of the French Riviera At first sight it appears that leading Arab oil sheikhs and enterpreneurs have been murdered to warn others of their kind to pay over multi-million dollar blackmail sums in order to stay alive. But with Jack Regan digging deeper, the truth turns out to be something else again...

Jacket illustration showing John Thaw and Dennis Waterman reproduced by courtesy of Thames Television.

If you are or were a fan of the TV show or the films, you can't really fail to be entertained by these paperback slices of British thick-ear, defiantly non Politically correct ( I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who's Arabic or European), varying from the small screen version in the almost non-appearance of Carter (who actively seems to dislike Regan).

We're up to our necks in 1970s oil politics, Regan being set up by virtually everyone from his bosses to the Special Branch, a South of France fantasy episode (Jack gets it on with the English rose in the Sheikh's harem) and occasional splashes of red violence. There's even mention of the Balcombe Street/Spaghetti House sieges and product placement for Bells, Teachers and Durex.

I read a few of these whilst at school, and was unsure of this one until the classic line 'Fuck Kojak' rang a bell.

I'm sure the later books (by 'Joe Balham') become more cartoonlike and (if possible) gave even more enjoyment.

[dem bones]

i somehow acquired copies of this one and Joe Balham's Regan And The Venetian Virgin but haven't progressed beyond the blurbs yet; they're in a queue after one of Frederick E. Smith's soporific Persuaders novelisations which i keep getting so far with before forgetting it exists. You certainly don't hear Lord Brett Sinclair giving it "Fuck Kojak", that's for sure.

Joe Balham - Regan 8: Regan And The Venetian Virgin (Futura, 1978)

Blurb:
Harry Forbes had a record as long as your arm. Robbery with violence, Grievous Bodily Harm, anything with violence attached. Yet suddenly Harry had a flat in Eaton Square, a chauffeur-driven Bentley . . . and the very best taste in art, especially the art of the Venetian Renaissance. And he was going straight? No way. But what was his angle? What took a piece of primitive muscle into the discreetly venomous world of high art? And without a blot on his newly established character?
Regan could bear to know. And Regan, toughest and most ruthless cop in the Flying Squad — The Sweeney — would use everything, from his own blood and money, to his new-found girlfriend, to find out ...

Also available:
THE SWEENEY
REGAN AND THE MANHATTAN FILE
REGAN AND THE DEAL OF THE CENTURY
REGAN AND THE LEBANESE SHIPMENT
REGAN AND THE HUMAN PIPELINE
REGAN AND THE SNOUT WHO CRIED WOLF

The cover photograph showing John Thaw and Dennis Waterman is produced by courtesy of Thames Television

A CONTACT BOOK FICTION /TV TIE-IN 07088 13399
U.K. 75p • AUSTRALIA $2.75* - NEW ZEALAND $2.30 - CANADA $2.25 *Recommended Price

There's also one called Regan And The Bent Stripper.

[fritzmaitland]

Mar 25, 2010 21:05:50 GMT dem bones said:

There's also one called Regan And The Bent Stripper.

Sure I've read that and it was brilliant. I've located Sweeney 9 : Regan And The High Rollers - on the bookshelf next to Sweeney 3, and it might disappointingly solve a Trash Fiction tantalising mystery - although credited to 'Joe Balham' on the cover, it's copyrighted to Ian Kennedy Martin inside. Must find time to give this a go.

[killercrab]

REGAN AND THE LEBANESE SHIPMENT >>

Read this and liked it. Rough tough writing like you'd expect. Picked up BENT STRIPPER last year .

ade

[Jaqhama]

I've still got the first six in the series.
In mint condition.

Enjoyed all the stories.
Ian Kennedy Martin wrote good some more thrillers also...the Connector?
Got them somewhere in the bookcase.

[franklinmarsh]

This seems as good a place as any. Picked up a double disc edition of the two big screen outings for the series, and watched the first Sweeney! last night.
Apparently made at the end of 1976 and released at the very beginning of 1977 it seems to be set in the near future (a character remarks upon a politicians speech being the same as one he made in 1978. ALthough providing all of yopur fave Sweeney type moments, unusually for a cinema adaptation of a British television series, this seems to have more in mind.
Energy secretary Ian Bannen has to give an important vote regarding oil prices. Good time girl Linda Bellingham chugging Smirnoff Red and puffing on a Rothman sends an urgent message that she is contemplating suicide in a nearby hotel room. This is under the direction of some very dodgy characters (led by Michael Coles on the other side of the law from his Inspector Murray character in the last two Hammer Draculas). Poor Linda is horribly murdered. The MPs fixer (Barry Foster with a dubious American accent) reassures the politician that he'll sort it all out.
Meanwhile a worse for wear Regan and Carter have woken up after a night of debauchery in Carter's rather impressive flat. After packing a Concorde stewardess off to Heathrow they struggle into work where various colleagues are tooling up for the obligatory punch up at Slough gasworks.
This duly takes place with the lines between police and criminal being well and truly blurred - and intercut with Linda's inquest which has small time criminal and Linda's 'bloke' Joe Melia fuming that the findings are 'bollocks.'
As he tipped Regan off about the attempted blag, he asks Jack to look into the death - which the court decided was suicide but he's convinced was murder. He starts to hassle Diane Keen, Linda's pal and (ahem) co-worker - who reports this to (gasp!) Barry Foster who, in addition to his political posturing, appears to be some sort of high class pimp.
It's not long before corporate assassin Mr Johnson (Coles) and a pal turn up at Joe's scrap yard/used car lot dressed as policemen (but armed with a machine gun) and eliminate the old school gangsters.
We flit between embassy lunches, high class dinner parties and seedy pubs. As Regan begins to look into Linda's death, he becomes a target and is soon on the run with Diane. A left wing journo (Colin Welland) susses out that Barry's up to no good, as the previously helpful MP is now almost off-limits unless Foster gives the go ahead. A bomb is placed in the offices of Welland's New Democrat paper by a window-cleaning Coles.
Things come to a head as Jack realises that the real villains are accountants who can make the amount of an armed robbery in an hour with little risk. His only chance is to somehow lay the blame on Foster. Foster is exposed and the secret service are going to extradite him. If Jack can only get him out in the open, his own assassins will do the rest.
A great look at London in the Arabs in 'Arrods days.

[dem bones]

caught this on tv over Christmas and it still retains a nasty edge, notably in such scenes as the scrapyard massacre, the innocent PC taking a bullet in the head and Regan's cold-blooded stitch up job on Foster at the end. The bridge by The Dickens Inn where Foster meets his doom is still creaking happily away. used to spend hours over there, feeding the ducks and clearing my head, but that changed once the old dockmaster's house acquired a new owner and now its wise to give the place a wide berth in case David Mellor's face is abroad.

[ripper]

I saw the Sweeney movie in the early 1980s when ITV screened it and did not see it again until last year. I remember thinking it was great on my first viewing, though I was a little less impressed second time around, though it was still enjoyable and pretty tough. I suppose that it is almost inevitable that a film version is going to vary substantially from the TV series that spawned it, but at least Regan, Carter et al didn't follow the path common to 1970s big screen adaptations of TV series and decamp to the seaside :-D. But even with my reservations, I would still prefer to watch the 1977 Sweeney movie than the so-called hollywood thrillers of today, which often seem to be verging on parody.

I don't recall seeing any of the Sweeney paperbacks back in the 1970s, though I did usually make straight to the horror section of my local bookshop and rarely bothered to peruse the crime shelves. I'm intrigued that Joe Balham may have been Ian Kennedy Martin, according to what a previous poster noticed, though if that was the case I wonder why the name Joe Balham was used to disguise IKM's authorship?

[pulphack]

The mystery here is why did IKM want Joe Balham as a pseudonym when he'd already published Sweeney books under his own name?

I have no idea, but there are two possibilities:

1. IKM owned the rights to the Sweeney, and so perhaps was credited as copyright holder while 'Joe' (acording to one blurb a cover for a 'well-known' crime writer - which would of course fit IKM) was a for-hire writer.

2. IKM didn't want his name on the books after the first few as he had a dispute with Euston Films.

In either case, the argument with Euston is the key: anyone else see the documentary about the Sweeney that was on ITV a few months back? It seems that IKM, having created the series speifically for his mate Thaw then had a falling out with Euston over the usual 'creative differences' and so for a few years disowned the project. One of the Euston men (can't remember which one offhand) remarked 'He should worry, he still had the rights and still got paid' (not quite verbatim, but as close as memory allows).

Which could mean that he wrote the books and used them to present his version of the Sweeney, but didn't want his own name because of the ongoing argument, or that he had to be credited as rights owner outside the actual VT (as the Euston aside suggested) and another hand was just for hire.

Incidentally, could it have been his brother Troy? Also a cracking TV thriller writer, though not too sure of his exploits in print?

[ripper]

You could very well be right, Pulphack. The rights issues and disputes with Euston may well be the key. I haven't read any of the Sweeney novels, but according to the Sweeney: The Official Guide book, the first 3 novels (written by IKM) and the remainder (written by Joe Balham) have very different styles, which only acts to muddy the situation. Could IKM have written the Balham books consciously in another distinctive style? I don't know. Or is it an indication that another hand was at work. Not sure about TKM being the author as I haven't read anything by him.

[ripper]

I have ordered a copy of The Sweeney by Ian Kennedy Martin and am going to get one or two more of the IKM and "Joe Balham" books to see how the styles differ between the two authors.

[ripper]

I read Regan and the Lebanese Shipment over the weekend. I have yet to read the first Sweeney tie-in I purchased last year but jumped straight in with this latter installment. The thing that struck me most was the change in the relationship between Regan and Carter. The matey banter of the series is totally absent and it's obvious that they don't really like each other. Regan suspects that Carter is after his job and pulls a couple of tricks to pull down Carter a peg or two. As it's a novel, the plot can be more expansive than the TV series with Regan going to Calais and the climax set at sea. However, I thought that the book was at its most effective when it was in its London setting. Also, there's a bit near the end when Regan and Len, his driver swim between two boats in the middle of the sea and I thought that was going a bit far. I couldn't imagine the boozy Regan of the TV series doing that. Talking of Len, he is the only one in his squad that Regan gets on with and trusts. His superior, Haskins also seems to dislike Regan, while in the series at least they had a respect for each other. Overall, I thought it was okay and I will soon be giving the Ian Kennedy Martin-penned Sweeney a go.

[valdemar]

One of my very favourite bits of dialogue comes from The Sweeney. I think [but I'm not 100% sure] that it comes from the second film. Regan is referring to a disliked senior officer, and says: "He's so bent that his picture wouldn't hang straight". He's joking, but in a later scene, in the office of the senior copper, his picture on the wall is askew. A nice touch. I notice some surprise about Regan and Carter not really liking each other - well, if you have watched the series very closely, that animosity is there, always bubbling under the surface. Carter is often quite vocal about Regan's often 'bull in a china shop' methods. The way Regan sometimes plans things, means Carter is given the shitty end of the stick, or left to pick up the pieces. To my mind, Carter was paired up with Regan to be his 'Conscience'. Regan and Carter are friends, and respect each other, but Regan is unsure of Carter's by-the-book approach, and Carter is often annoyed by his 'Guv'nor's' charge-in-all-guns-blazing methodology. This friction is why the show works, and why we like this pair of hard bastards. Or maybe I've just watched it too many times...

[pulphack]

Indeed, it is from Sweeney 2, and he's talking about Denholm Elliott, who does a great turn ('I was just an innocent country boy corrupted by the bright lights of the city' - and with a straight face!). I picked up the two movies on a double disc recently, and the first one is very odd - written by Ranald Graham, who was more at home with the Professionals and Dempsey And Makepiece, it's more like those, which is presumably why Regan gets suspended early in the film, to give it that lone investigator angle. The rancour is very pronounced between Regan and Carter in this one, so much so that it took me aback, not having sen it for years. The second film is written by Troy Kennedy Marti, and is more like a long TV episode, but possibly better for that. There is still an edge to the Regan/Carter dynamic, but more subtlely written, giving them more to work with. I didn't really notice it at the time, but you're right about their relationship, and it does seem to be that Carter is the conscience while Regan is the unfettered id (eh??)... They balance really well. I only picked up on this when watching on ITV4 again, but in my defence I was only about 10-12 when I first watched it, and much more interested in the car chases and the swearing. Ah, wham I kidding,that's still all I'm really interested in...

And I've STILL got this bloody book on my unread pile!

[ltd]

Nov 27, 2012 9:30:29 GMT ripper said:

You could very well be right, Pulphack. The rights issues and disputes with Euston may well be the key. I haven't read any of the Sweeney novels, but according to the Sweeney: The Official Guide book, the first 3 novels (written by IKM) and the remainder (written by Joe Balham) have very different styles, which only acts to muddy the situation. Could IKM have written the Balham books consciously in another distinctive style? I don't know. Or is it an indication that another hand was at work. Not sure about TKM being the author as I haven't read anything by him.

Hi everyone, my first post and I hope it's of assistance on the vexed question of the identity of Joe Balham. I found this blog entry a while back that suggests at least one of the Balham Sweeney novels was written by Alan White. I'm not  familiar with his work but I know that one the books he wrote under his own name, The Long Day's Dying, was made into a film in 1968 with David Hemmings, Tom Bell and Tony Beckley. It's supposed to be a bit more experimental than most war films of that era.