Poet in the Gutter Sam Taylor

“With a few deft strokes Baker paints an intriguing and believable portrait of his hero, leaving the reader wanting to know about Sam and his life in the city of York. It is tightly written in an urgent and individual style. An engrossing read which grips from the first chapter.” Robert Beaumont, Yorkshire Evening Press.

“Exceedingly cunning, laid-back plot. Genial, fast and funny.” Philip Oakes, Literary Review.

“Baker’s Poet in the Gutter turns into something quite unexpected. John Baker does not soften any of the real horrors of life in an abusive family, surviving alone on the streets, or fighting drink, degradation and solitude, but he has used them as the basis for an entrancing – and funny – fairy-tale in which all the dragons are slain and the good guys come out on top.” Natasha Cooper, novelist, Times Literary Supplement.

``Funny how things start out,'' muses wannabe Yorkshire shamus Sam Turner. ``You take on a matrimonial case and find you're tracking an international serial killer.'' In fact Sam's first case is deceptive from the word go, when Terry Deacon, hearing Sam tell an AA meeting that he's a detective, hires him to follow his wife Jane, whom he suspects is cheating on him. She isn't; instead, Terry has taken trying to get her followed as a way of hiring a bodyguard for her on the cheap. By the time Sam finds that out, though, Terry himself is already dead, stabbed in a frenzy and left with a sign (``Terry Deacon deserves to die'') that connects his murder to a rash of killings of former housemates of New Zealand poet Graham East. The police think Graham's their man, but he's dead, too, killed by his girlfriend Frances Golding, who's now convinced his life was ruined by people who aren't her and transformed herself into his avenger. The motley crew Sam assembles to track down the killer--old biddy Celia Allison, pool-hall buddy Gus, and a homeless kid called Geordie--have a raffish appeal, but unbalanced, threatening Frances wears out her welcome long before the end of this slender tale. Newcomer Baker's agreeably clipped delivery hides the fact that most of his surprises are exhausted in the early going. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.