I met up with Graham Bartlett again at Newcastle Noir, in December. The festival is run by the inimitable Jacky Gramozi Collins (aka Dr Noir) and of you enjoy the darker side of fiction, I highly recommend taking in it. Anyway, this is where I caught up with English author Graham Bartlett most recently. It was there that I realised that I had never read any of his books, so I decided to remedy that.
I remember Peter Robinson telling me many years ago to start with the book he had written most recently, and then if I enjoyed it, to go back and read earlier novels. He said this, self effacingly, on the basis that he may have got better at his craft in the interim. However, at that point Peter had written 26 novels, as Graham has written only three I decided to ignore the advice and risk starting at the beginning of the series. I'm glad I did.
The Blurb
How far would you go?
A city on the brink. A police force in tatters. A killing that shakes the community ...
The murder of a promising footballer, son of Brighton’s highest-ranking police officer, means Detective Superintendent Jo Howe has a complicated and sensitive case on her hands. The situation becomes yet more desperate when her boss, father to the murdered teenager, receives devastating blackmail threats.
Howe can trust no one as she tracks the brutal killer in a city balanced on a knife edge of vigilante action and a police force riven with corruption.
The Review
Bad for Good gets off to an explosive start. It is exciting, gripping and raw. The novel is set in Brighton and it will not surprise any reader that the author was a senior police detective there before retiring from the force and taking up his pen.
The villains are dark, credible and scary, the police are underfunded, overworked and human.
Two things surprised me about this novel. The first was the vivid and disturbing description of punishments meted out by the villains. The second was that Bartlett chose to make his main protagonist a woman. Perhaps he is equally surprised that my main character, DI Hunter Wilson is male.
As readers will know I don't do spoilers. What I will say is that Bad for Good is a cracking read with unexpected twists and turns. The other thing that sets this book apart from other police procedurals is that some characters are neither good nor bad but there are definitely shades of grey amongst them. The story is well plotted, cleverly woven, and gripping from beginning to end. Will I read more books by Graham Bartlett: undoubtedly yes and I highly recommend this excellent debut novel.
The Author
Graham Bartlett is a best-selling author and crime and police procedural advisor to fiction and TV writers.
He was a police officer for thirty years and mainly policed the city of Brighton and Hove, rising to become a Chief Superintendent and its police commander. He started writing when he left the police in 2013 and, almost by accident, became a police procedural and crime advisor, helping scores of authors and TV writers (including Peter James, Mark Billingham, Elly Griffiths, Anthony Horowitz, Ruth Ware, Claire McGowan and Dorothy Koomson) achieve authenticity in their drama.
He runs online crime writing workshops and courses with the Professional Writing Academy and deliver inputs to Masters programmes at the University of Cambridge and the University of East Anglia as well as at the Crime Writing Certificate programme at West Dean College.
His Jo Howe crime series launched in 2022 with his debut novel, Bad for Good. Shortlisted for the Crimefest Debut of the Year award and winner of the Crime Fiction Lovers Editors' Choice award.
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