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Palmer, Frank

Dark Forest

London, Allison & Busby. 207 pp. £5.99.

The Dark Forest is symbolically enough Sherwood Forest.

Former high flier Phil "Sweeney" Todd is incapacitated and about to be discharged from the police force. He won't accept a boring desk job and it looks as if the police are through with him.

As luck would have it, the lawyer handling his case against the police has a missing person on her hands. A janitor from Sydney, N.S.W. had come to England to witness the Aussies giving a stuffing to the Poms, failed to return and the concerned resident of the apartment block had asked her to hire a private detective to find him. She offers the job to Phil Todd and he accepts. At fifteen quid an hour plus expenses.

There are lots of twists and turns in the plot, nothing and nobody is what they seem, the picture of the miners' strike (which led to the downfall of Ted Heath and the rise of Margaret Thatcher) is spot-on. The Nottingham miners were the ones who were loyal ... to the government and would not back the strike. The investigation also uncovers how they were treated by Thatcher & Co. (enough to make anyone cynical about politicians). Todd's life is in danger as he realises more and more that there is more to it than a missing janitor from Sydney. In the end, all illusions are stripped away and the ungodly are defeated, but have they been defeated too late?

There is a golden extra in the book. Phil Todd discovers that the woman he loves has been unfaithful. He breaks off all connection with her. He simply cannot understand how she could do it. He cannot forgive. Yet he loves her still. Within the missing person plot lies the story of how she won her way back to him, assisted by the lawyer who hired him in the first place.

Frank Palmer has completed the 'Jacko' series. Jacko has been retired to write crime novels and this is ostensibly the first novel written by Jacko accepted for publication. Talk about twists.

Palmer, Frank

Murder Live

London, Allison & Busby. 247 pp. £5.99.

Friday the 13th was picked for the title of the TV series, because, like walking under ladders, it is supposed to be unlucky. The idea was to show the public how the police are fighting crime. Broadcast crews had been granted carte blanche to go with the police responding to 999 calls anywhere. Life in the raw! Great idea, except that instead of a drug dealer being arrested or whatever, Clive Voss, the show's presenter is shown in a spreading pool of blood and beyond famous last words. An adoring public places so many flowers at the spot where he died, that they have spread round the corner. Remember this scene. It figures in the denouement.

Chief Superintendent Phil Todd is assigned to the murder. His wife happens to be a media personality (to use contemporary jargon) and his superiors think this gives him special insight into a real, genuine TV murder. He is, incidentally, virtually crippled, but amazing what a good gym can do if you work at it.

The picture of life at the top of the police force is impeccable, especially the portrait of a police chief who has been trained to be a media personality, but neither a policeman, nor a manager of men. So is the way in which (at least in Britain) such men are got rid of by their superiors. The middle to lower ranks of the police are still solid.

Does crime run in the family, you may ask when you have reached the end, even when the family itself wants a new generation to be squeaky clean?

Palmer, Frank

Red Gutter

London, Allison & Busby. 200 pp. £5.99.

Any cop above the rank of inspector is a chief to a tabloid and merits a big headline. Phil "Sweeney" Todd (after the demon barber of Fleet Street, of course, and probably the Sweeney TV police series) is on holiday with his wife, peeks at a newspaper over someone else's shoulder and discovers his boss has fallen down a steep incline and is dead. Accident or murder?

Good and ambitious cop that he is, he cuts his vacation short. This could be the chance of a lifetime. Solve the investigation his boss (known as Silent Knight) was working on (and whether it was an accident or murder) and the way is open all the way to the top.

Silent Knight had been investigating animal rights terrorists. They had made a fool of Sweeney Todd in the past and here is an immediate, a more emotional and personal reason for success. He wants to get his own back.

As the investigation unfolds, Sweeney Todd discovers that it wasn't animal rights activists. They were being used as a front. Silent Knight had been silent because his own family was involved in fraud.

Like every good mystery novel this one has an extra. First of all, when the book begins Sweeney Todd is very gung ho about promotion. He is going to make it to the top. He will be Chief Constable. Towards the end comes the shift in his inward perspective. This may not be after all what he wants. Being Chief Constable may not be in character. It is interesting to compare this shift in inner perspective with K.C. Constantine's Rugs Carlucci. The second extra is the attitude to animal slaughter. Sweeney Todd comes from the country, where animal slaughter is an accepted, everyday event. His French counterpart even reminds him that the French nickname for the Brits is Roast Beef. As he faces the way animals are transported and the conditions in slaughterhouses his outward perspective shifts.

This is the second in the Phil "Sweeney" Todd series. Frank Palmer is a former journalist.