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Jacobson, Alan

False Accusations

London, Coronet Books from Hodder & Stoughton. 405 pp. £5.99.

" ... what am I gonna do with you? You're well-meaning but you seem to be looking for ways to bury yourself."

Readers are now becoming used to mystery novels in which powerful government departments or gigantic corporations are ranged against some powerless individual. In this book, a well-meaning, nay naive, medical doctor, a compassionate doctor and a good family man is accused of murder and rape. His accuser is a very beautiful woman.

The book begins with a fatal hit-and-run in which two innocent people die as the driver speeds away. Following a tip-off, the kindly Dr. Phillip is arrested. It was definitely his car that killed the two innocent pedestrians. And when he is accused of rape there is all the necessary forensic evidence required. Two friends stand by him. His lawyer and a policeman he once befriended. Before long the evidence piles up that somehow a woman who hated him has been manufacturing the forensic evidence.

Marriages nearly break down and are restored as the story unravels. The satanic woman has organised well. The American judicial system may be amongst the best in the world, says one of the characters. but it has loopholes. Will Dr. Madison fall because of the loopholes? No, says another, it may have its imperfections. but it does allow the innocent a voice as well as the guilty.

Perhaps forensic evidence isn't everything that it is cracked up to be. Perhaps when all the evidence points inexorably one way that is the time to be more than a little suspicious of the evidence. A mystery novel that has something to say about justice, injustice, science, and human beings caught up in all of these.

Alan Jacobson is qualified in arts (English) and science (doctor of chiropractice). The Jacobsons live in California.

James, Bill

Panicking Ralph

London, Pan Books. 282 pp. £5.99.

The cops are three. The Chief Constable, Mark Lane, has a sense of mission. He wants to clear his patch of criminals, completely and utterly. "We are only here to transform your vision into fact, sir. Buoyed always by the inspiration you offer," says his Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles. The new type of man at the top is easy to manipulate. Iles knows that if the Chief Constable clears the patch of criminals, the London gangs will move in and they are impregnable. Once in, never out. Detection skills had been made valueless by timorous courts and radical politicians. At the sharp end of policing is the third cop, Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur. Harpur once had an affair with Iles's wife.

The criminals. The local drugs supremo having been eliminated, others mobilise to take over. Amongst them is Ralph Ember, generally thought to be a bit of a damp squib. Ralph Ember is having an affair with a married woman, takes her to the beach. Two killers move in on them. The woman is killed, Ralph Ember escapes. He comes back to see whether she may still be alive and drags her out of the sea. There is a neat reversal at the end of the book, when he has to drag a body back into the sea. He also realises that it was not him his rivals were after and he wasn't such a big fish after all.

Just as the police are torn between their duty to preserve law and order, and the knowledge that textbook and legal policing does not work, so the criminals are torn. They know they are criminals, but they also long for respectability. They watch each other's trappings. One of them doesn't like his woman buying clothes fashionable in the past. It reflects badly on his status. After all, he is a businessman and knows by what criteria his fellow-businessmen judge him.

Bill James's Harpur and Iles series are a penetrating insight into the change in the writing of crime novels since the Golden Days of Agatha Christie et al, and of course, the reader's and TV viewer's taste.

Bill James lives in South Wales. He has a wife and four children. If you like Harpur and Iles, the good news is that there are thirteen more.

Jeffries, Roderic

The Ambiguity of Murder

London, Collins Crime, HarperCollins. 200 pp. £16.99.

The body of a retired Bolivian diplomat, Guido Zavala, is found floating in his swimming pool. Inspector Alvarez thinks that this has been no accident and begins to look for suspects. Policemen all over the world seem to have the same problem: superior officers who will not listen to them, spend time and energy putting them down, getting in the way of an investigation and finally taking the credit for themselves. Superior Chief Salas is like them all.

As Alvarez proceeds with his thankless investigation he discovers that there were lots of people who had a good cause to have disliked the awful diplomat. A beautiful young woman with a much older husband had been having an affair with him (and he hadn't been entirely faithful to her), Santiago Pons, whose heavy gambling losses had placed him at the mercy of the murdered man.

There are true-to-life portraits of expats, lots of wise saws ("To misunderstand is the first step towards understanding.") The book is also very funny. Alvarez's life is threatened and his Superior Chief refuses to help. His Cousin Dolores (whom nobody dare offend, or they don't get invited to her mouth-watering dinners) is certain that men are unable to look after themselves, gathers her women friends, and rescues the hapless Alvarez.

In the end Alvarez solves the case, but the murderer had a just cause. What should he do? What would you have done?

Roderic Jeffries and his wife live in Mallorca, of course.

Jones, Judith

Baby Talk

London, Constable Crime. 192 pp. £16.99.

Nobody can get the man known as Coventry Tom. He's too big. He knows people who are too big. He's got stuff on people who are too big. World-wide people. People with fur collars. He helps raise money for charity, heart research, kidneys, lifeboats. That's how he gets into society, with big friends who look after him. Coventry Tom is king of the underworld.

Kerry Lake, a police detective, is out to get him. Even her live-in boyfriend thinks Coventry Tom is innocent. She has only one ally, a child, Chris Mallard. Chris wants to avenge the death of his pal, killed by Coventry Tom. Why did Coventry Tom kill a child? Was it business? Chris brings scraps of information about Coventry Tom to Kerry Lake (hence the book's title).

It doesn't take long for Coventry Tom to learn who is after him. A woman detective and a child! He can swat them like flies. Kerry Lake is faced with a moral dilemma. She can stop risking the life of her child informer (the account of how he is paid as an informer and what he does with his money is both funny and sad) and her own life and walk away.

But things have gone too far, Kerry cannot walk away, Chris will not, and his father decides he must be a hero in his son's eyes and take on the ungodly.

Judith Jones, a pseudonym of David Craig and Bill James, has her own persona, in which she conducts a more or less solitary campaign to restore billiards to popularity above snooker.