The Crooked Man - Softcover

Davison, Philip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0142002089 ISBN 13: 9780142002087

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2002

Synopsis

A freelance operative for Britain's MI5, Harry Fielding is given the task of cleaning up the crime scene where a murder committed by a high-ranking cabinet minister and ensuring that the guilty man does not become a suspect in the killing. Original.

About this title

About the Author

Philip Davison was born in 1957 in Dublin, where he still lives. He has a background in film editing and has written short stories and plays for stage and television, as well as three previous novels published before he created Harry Fielding.

Reviews

Forget the knee-jerk comparisons to le Carre; this oddly compelling blue-collar spy novel, the debut effort from the talented Davison, has the feel of George Higgins' Friends of Eddie Coyle--gritty, low-life pathos, tightly written and utterly unromantic. Harry Fielding is an "understrapper," a freelancer for MI5, the British equivalent of the FBI. He lives an anonymous, dreary life, spying on government types, breaking and entering, doing the odd wiretap--no "wet work" and nothing particularly important. That all changes when Harry happens to witness two murders, one involving a cabinet minister and requiring an elaborate cover-up. Gradually, Harry finds himself troubled by the corruption around him and begins to look for a way out of the morass. Tone is everything here; Harry moves as if in a self-induced trance, somewhere between Camus' Mersault and Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Harry's London is a dreary, soul-stultifying place, and his attempt to escape seems to offer only another kind of defeat. A muted, minimalist morality tale without a moral. Bill Ott
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Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0142002089
• ISBN 13: 9780142002087
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208