RUDE BOYS

Mitch Roberts (A Penny for the Old Guy, etc.), now stranded in London while he beds down in Amanda's basement and tries to decide whether he loves her or not, is working off the books, so to speak, for Jamaican-born attorney Hillary Root, on the verge of trying her first case, when her Rastafarian half-brother is poisoned, then has his throat slit. When Hillary's father is also mutilated, as well as her cat, Mitch begins to seriously investigate—in a search that will send him from London's docks and Rasta bars and dope-dealers to Jamaica's Blue Mountains and Rude Boys (malicious gangsters) before he realizes that all the leads tie in with Hillary's client, a man accused of a bar murder, who is now loudly denouncing Hillary as incompetent to defend him. Regardless, she gets him off, and, too late, Mitch has proof of his involvement with her family murders. Can justice be served? Not in the courts, perhaps, but possibly with a telex Mitch sends to a vengeful Jamaican.... Depicts a side of Jamaica the tourist board never mentions— in a nicely done, medium-boiled poke-in-the-heart at Empire race relations.