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WASTED YEARS by John Harvey

WASTED YEARS

by John Harvey

Pub Date: June 10th, 1993
ISBN: 0-8050-2044-6
Publisher: Henry Holt

It's 1992, and the scruffy Midlands city where Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick (Off Minor, etc.) lives and works is plagued by a series of well-planned robberies. They remind Charlie of similar happenings ten years back that ended with the jailing of taciturn, icy John Prior—after an encounter that brought Charlie closer to death than he'd ever been. Prior's blues singer wife Ruth became involved with a detective on the case—the sinister Rains. Charlie's marriage also ended about then, and Rains later left the force for greener fields. Now, Prior is about to be released from prison—supposedly a reformed man. Charlie, a passionate lover of jazz and blues, worries about the fate of Ruth, now vanished, if a vengeful Prior catches up with her. But he finds a way to track her, through pathetic small-time crook Keith Nylands, long under the thumb of his vicious onetime prison pal Darren. Keith's alcoholic father Reg, once a talented drummer, knows Ruth's whereabouts. He and Charlie strike a bargain that activates the unflaggingly tense buildup to a surprising climax. A dizzying but never incoherent panorama of broken dreams, brutal street language, bent cops, as well as those struggling to do their jobs and hold their lives together—all of it permeated by Charlie's unsanctimonious probity and clumsy grace. Harvey is truly master of the police procedural for the 90's.