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Baker, John

King of the Streets

London, Gollancz. 254 pp. £9.99.

Sam Turner is a private eye. His assistants are a teenage street kid, his former partner's widow and a retired English teacher. His client is Jeanie Scott. Cal, her ex-husband had been murdered and she feared for her daughter's and her own safety. Cal and his partner Geoff had a job as surveillance camera operators. The York City Fathers thought total surveillance of the town centre a good thing, but who watches the watchers?

Sam Turner is warned off the case but he is a stubborn fellow, so he digs deeper. Digging deeper means endangering those closest to him and he has to decide whether it is worth going on. He decides to continue with the investigation, especially as an old enemy of his seems involved.

Child abuse, murder and pornography have inevitably moved from the front pages of newspapers to the intermediate sections, the analysis sections and finally to crime fiction. This is not a book for the sensitive or those after entertainment that will not touch them, but of its kind, it is fast-paced and good.

This is John Baker's third Sam Turner novel. As befits a former rolling stone he has been a social worker, shipbroker, truck driver, milkman and must be young enough to have been in computers. He lives in York with his wife and five children.

Baron, Adam

Hold Back the Night
A Billy Rucker Mystery

London, Pan Books. 359 pp. £5.99.

Private investigator Billy Rucker tracks down missing teenagers in London. Parents pay a set fee to know their children are alive, even if living off the streets. Rucker won't reveal the whereabouts of the missing children, because they often fled home because of the treatment they got from their families. But he sends the parents a photo and collects a modest fee. Rucker is good at his job, patient, but also on his own admission, lucky. The harder he works, the luckier he gets (was it Paul de Kruif who said that luck favours the patient researcher?).

Luck is on Billy Rucker's side when he is asked to find Lucy Bradley by her mother. That very morning, just before her mother came, he had seen the daughter. He assumed that all he has to do is hang around the same area. He does. And finds Lucy dead - murdered.

Thus begins the investigation revealing the usual obscene picture of a large city which tourists and even residents do not see, or turn a blind eye towards. The police have been corrupted and give every indication of being inefficient (but that is one of the surprises in the book). We are all used to unusual endings, but this one is more unusual than most.

Pity we can't make runaway teenagers and especially their families read this book.

Noir not for the squeamish.

Adam Baron lives in London and has his own comedy act with two of his brothers. This is his second novel.