Could this be the end for Heck?
The Sunday Times bestseller returns with an unforgettable crime thriller. Fans of MJ Arlidge and Stuart MacBride won’t be able to put this down.
Don’t let them catch you…
A Deadly Hunt
DS ‘Heck’ Heckenburg has been tasked with retrieving one of the UK’s most wanted men. But the trail runs cold when Heck discovers a video tape showing the fugitive in a fight for his life. A fight he has no chance of winning.
A Dangerous Game
Heck realises that there’s another player in this game of cat and mouse, and this time, they’ve not just caught the prize: they’ve made sure no one else ever does.
A Man Who Plays With Fire
How far will Heck and his team go to protect some of the UK’s most brutal killers? And what price is he willing to pay?
Extract:
HECK’S ORIGINS
Readers often ask me which other crime authors are my benchmarks?
Which of those writers who focus on the seamy side of life are the ones who’ve most influenced me in the writing of my own novels? I’d imagine that lots of guys and girls in my situation get asked similar questions, and like me, will respond by reeling off lists of the most impressive names in the business – because we’ve all read widely in the field, and we’d be lying if we didn’t admit that we’ve all probably taken something from every great crime novel that’s gone before us and the masterclass cop characters we’ve so easily been able to picture thanks to how well realised they were on the written page.
But one question I’m rarely asked – and something I’d like to deal with today – is are there any film or TV cop characters who’ve been a stimulus for me, particularly with regard to DS Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg (who’ll be reappearing on the bookshelves very shortly, in KISS OF DEATH, of course)?
In response, I think it’s true to say that there are probably four celluloid cops (or cop situations) that have had this kind of direct impact on me; two films and two TV shows.
It might be an embarrassing thing for some writers to admit, because we are supposed to be literary types who, deep down, should only be affected by genuine greatness, though I’d contend that greatness can be found on the screen as well as in book-form.
Anyway, here we go. The two cop movies and two cop TV shoes that most made an impression on me and were most instrumental in the development of my character, Heck, are, in chronological order: Bullitt, The French Connection, The Sweeney and The Shield.
Aside from the fact that these are all essentially slick, quick, tough-talking action thrillers, set in contemporary times and an unforgiving urban setting, in actual fact they could not be more different from each other, and they’ve had very different effects on my work.
First, the movies …
BULLITT (1968), directed by Peter Yates, starred Steve McQueen as Frank Bullitt, a San Francisco police inspector in charge of a Mafia super-grass who is shot and critically wounded shortly before he’s due to give evidence. Bullitt needs to track the killers and whoever gave them their orders, but increasingly upsets his superiors as the enquiry threatens to lead him into ever higher places in the city’s administration.
One of the first ever cop thrillers to examine the often real connections between organised crime and the establishment, Bullitt is high on action but low on violence, casting a sexy and athletic film star in a very cerebral role, which sees him working his way through a highly complex investigation by following his instincts rather than his orders. Readers of the Heck books will probably not need an explanation from me as to what kind of influence this exerted. While the outsider cop is a regular fixture in crime fiction – and Heck is no different, loving his ‘roving commission’ – he often develops theories based on his own analysis of
crime scenes and crime situations which his bosses can’t buy into. Much of the drama and tension in the Heck books stems from the balancing act he must perform between following a system he often suspects is bent or incompetent, or both, and following his own gut.
THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971), directed by William Friedkin, cast Gene Hackman as Eddie ‘Popeye’ Doyle, a real-life New York narcotics cop, whose vindictive pursuit of a local mobster leads him to break open one of the biggest heroin importation rings in US history.
The reason why this one was influential may not be immediately obvious. While Frank Bullitt was a handsome hero, Popeye Doyle is a slob and a boor, and unpopular with his colleagues, and that is not the way I’ve envisaged Heck. Heck is usually affable and has one or two friends on the force, even if not necessarily among the brass. But he and Doyle share a dogged nature; it’s that instinct thing again, that old-fashioned police hunch business. In The French Connection, Popeye only gets to the real bad guys after a prolonged and convoluted enquiry, which many of his fellow officers oppose because they simply don’t trust him. And that’s been the story of Heck’s life in all seven novels so far. Neither he nor Doyle have an unfailing faith in their own judgement, but they’re both of them stubborn and bullish enough to keep advancing along an increasingly difficult track despite growing evidence that it’s likely to be a dead-end.
And now the TV shows …
THE SWEENEY (1975/78), made by Thames Television, starred John Thaw as Jack Regan, a northern copper displaced to London, and now a DI in Scotland Yard’s elite Flying Squad, a unit who exist solely to tackle the city’s gangs of armed robbers.
The situation was the bigger deal for me here, rather than the actual character. While I certainly took some influences for Heck from John Thaw’s electrifying portrayal of Regan – I referenced it directly in Kiss of Death, the exiled northerner, lonely and cut off from his family, perennially unlucky in love – ultimately, I was more interested in his relationship with the underworld. By its nature, the real-life Flying Squad had to wheel and deal to get results; it was interested in big fish, not little ones. Therefore, unofficial alliances were made. They relied heavily on informers, against whose own criminal activities they often turned a blind eye. To some, this was common sense policing; to others it was corruption. The Flying Squad of the 1970s did eventually come unstuck, when it got embroiled in some seriously questionable practises, and this also happens in the TV series. But in the Heck books, which are set in the here and now, we never take it that far. Nevertheless, Heck refuses to play by the rules; he knows every trick in the book, which may include strong-arming criminals and even blackmailing them. At the same time, he makes allegiances with lesser villains in order to pull in the more dangerous ones. Heck is not corrupt, but in the heavily bureaucratic world of 21st century policing, all this would be complete anathema. So, even though Heck’s methods gain him extraordinary results, as Regan’s did back in the 1970s, we always get the feeling that, at any moment, his time could be up.
THE SHIELD, (2002/08), will almost certainly be my most controversial selection. A popular but divisive US cop show from Fox, it told the tale of South-Central Los Angeles’ infamous Strike Team, a group of undercover detectives, led by Sergeant Vic Mackey (a bravura performance by Michael Chiklis!), who would literally stop at nothing in their war against street crime.
Based on the real-life Rampart unit, who in the 1990s were the centre of a huge misconduct scandal, Strike Team members are openly portrayed as corrupt, killing some of their targets, framing and stealing from others, robbing criminal strongholds and even, on one occasion, murdering a fellow police officer who’s grown suspicious about them. However, such was the skill with which the show was written, directed and performed, that you endlessly rooted for these maverick antiheroes, even though you knew it would at some point come crashing down in flames – as indeed it did. I should say straight away that there is no aspect of Vic Mackey in Mark Heckenburg. Mackey is ruthless, violent and sadistic. Oh, he is charismatic, and he has his caring side with his family, but when he’s on the job, he’s an out-and-out hoodlum. But what I inherited from The Shield was not the character but the milieu.
The borough of Farmington is a fictional corner of LA, where every kind of crime and vice is rampant. Psychos, weirdoes and creeps populate every street; there are serial killers, gangbangers, child-molesters and pimps. Drugs and disease are everywhere; there is horrendous squalor. And yet there is colour to all this. In the fashion of James Bond or even Batman, The Shield features some of the most wonderfully deadly and deranged villains I’ve ever seen on television: the Jesus lookalike who collects people’s feet (whether they’re alive or dead); the handsome, intelligent Texan who relentlessly murders needy women; the scar-faced gangster who burns his rivals at the stake. It’s perhaps no coincidence that in the Heck books, we try to offer a cross-section of villainy, but that it’s always (or so we hope) memorable and outlandish. The inspiration for that could lie with Bond and Batman, but it’s mostly the case, I think, that it lies with The Shield.
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