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Post by dem bones on Mar 13, 2008 22:23:29 GMT
Harry Patterson - The Graveyard Shift (Mayflower, 1968: John Long, 1965) Ben Garvald is released from Wandsworth after serving a seven year stretch for his part in the Amalgamated-Steel hoist. Joan Fleming (romantic lead) is worried that Garvald is out to get her sister and his former wife Bella, Bella having divorced him and married his former crony Harry Faulkner while Ben was inside. Joan is also concerned at any scandal being attached to her personally as she's dragged herself up from Khyber Street to become a respectable schoolmistress. She decides to share her problems with Superintendent Grant of the CID. Grant's force is depleted due to an Asian Flu epidemic, so he calls in DS Nick Miller, newly qualified from Bramshill, to begin work two days early. Grant and his colleagues don't think much of "college boys", but needs must in a crisis so he sends DC Brady to pick him up at his plush pad in Fairview Avenue. Brady takes an instant dislike - maybe it's "the black silk pyjamas with the Russian neck and gold buttons, the monogram on the pocket" or something - and Grant is likewise disparaging when Nick turns up for the Graveyard Shift: "What in the hell is that thing on your head?"
Nick took it off with a slight smile. "This, sir? It's what the Germans call a Schildtmutze. Everyone will be wearing them soon."
"God save us from that ... if you want to go around looking like one of those burks who stand behind the good-looking bird in the adverts in the women's magazines, good luck to you."
"As a matter of fact, that's exactly how I do want to look, sir." By now we already suspect that Nick isn't exactly your common or garden Dixon of Dock Green copper and this proves to be very much the case. Not only is he a kung-fu expert, he's also an accomplished musician and his closest friend is junkie nightclub pianist Chuck 'The American' Lazer who, coincidentally plays all the sleazy joints owned by Bella's new husband and is also buddies with Garvald. Nick also grew up on Khyber Street, and we already know what a byword for violent crime that place was. So: is Garvald really coming to gun down his ex? Unlikely, thinks Nick: the guy's a bruiser for sure, but he's never laid a finger on a woman (unlike almost everyone else in the novel: they take it in turns to play give-a-woman-a-good-slap) Has his return got something to do with the cash from the Amalgamated-Steel job, long believed to have gone up in flames when the getaway van exploded? We don't really need to ask "have Garvald's crooked mates really gone legit all of a sudden?" because we're wise to that by page two. Throw in sporadic acts of violence, Nick's all-important steamy sex scene (which is anything but) and that's pretty much The Graveyard Shift. Except for the sleaze factor (ah, nice to see you're all coming out of your coma's). There's really not that much of it, but what there is takes place at Club Eleven, where the men in dirty raincoats of legend - nowadays reduced to posting on here if I'm any judge - court heart seizure as they sweat and drool over ... It was the usual sort of thing. Famous beauties through the ages. Each time the comedian announced a name, a curtain rose at the back of the room disclosing a nude tableau and various fleshy young women depicting Helen of Troy, Eve in the Garden and so on.
At various times, the girls paraded along the catwalk, displaying their ample charms in a manner the Lord Chamberlain would have found very difficult to accept. All the time, the comedian kept up a line of patter that verged on the obscene. And then there's some business involving the improbable use of a light-bulb which you just wouldn't be interested in ...
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Post by sean on Mar 14, 2008 9:16:28 GMT
Isn't Harry Patterson better known as Jack Higgins?
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Post by dem bones on Mar 14, 2008 9:37:09 GMT
From a quick google of 'Harry Patterson' it would appear so.
Aren't the couple on the cover better known as Andrew Eldritch and Patricia Morrison?
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Post by sean on Mar 14, 2008 9:46:13 GMT
Yeah, they're actually stills from the 'other' video for the song Lucretia.
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Post by pulphack on Mar 14, 2008 11:54:52 GMT
This sounds a cracking read, already. And a great cover, too.
I was never a great Higgins fan, but from what I recall he used the Higgins name for thrillers/espionage, and the Patterson for more straightforward crime fiction.
According to the Bookseller last year, he's one of those guys like Cussler, Reeman, etc whose books are suddenly going big again, after yars of still writing, but to a dwindling audience. The theory is that occassional bloke readers in their thirties are playing safe by looking for names they remember their dads reading when they were kids.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Nov 25, 2008 21:31:44 GMT
Picked up a copy of this with a shite modern cover. Went to the Doctors today and as usual he ran about 40 minutes late. As I was early in just under an hour I read the first 75 pages of The Graveyard Shift and its a corker. I hope DS Nick Miller gets roughed up at some point though. He's too good, smarmy and rich to be true.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jan 18, 2009 17:27:06 GMT
Why the 1980s weren't a patch on the 1970s. Arrow 1988 edition. If it weren't for Dem's stuff above, I wouldn't have bothered. A great little read. And one that's got me back into paperbacks.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jun 1, 2009 11:54:17 GMT
Hee! Involved in Jack Higgins' A Prayer For The Dying at present. Nick Miller's in this, but not so's you'd notice. Really enjoying boffo villain Jack Meehan - gang leader and funeral director - when not embalming some poor unfortunate and helping little old ladies to afford a decent send off for their deceased husbands, he's ordering the execution of rivals and nailing the hands of those who upset him to tables.
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