From Publishers Weekly
Burly London copper George Macrae, last seen in the excellent Thief Taker , is beset here by a maelstrom of dire events whose impact is exacerbated by his inability to maintain any emotional distance from the women in his life. Macrae has a soft spot for a dead bookie's wife, but now a thug claiming to be the widow's business manager is demanding the return of a sizable chunk of cash the policeman once foolishly borrowed from the deceased. Taking a handout from a known felon is just the kind of thing Macrae's ambitious superior would love to nail him for, and Deputy Commander Scales forces Macrae's reluctant young partner Leo Silver to launch a secret investigation. Meanwhile, a mysterious woman moves into a ground-floor flat just below one of Macrae's former wives and immediately fixates on the recent suicide of a previous tenant. To these already sufficient goings-on, the author deftly adds the widow of Macrae's loyal driver, who battles teenage thugs in a housing estate. Like his earlier novel, Scholefield's latest dazzles with detail and subtly nuanced characterization. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Leo Silver, the new breed of cop at the Met (yuppified/no strong-arm stuff) receives an awful assignment: a secret investigation of his partner, George Macrae--a hard-drinking, tough as tire-iron copper--and of the allegation that he's bent. While Silver tries to extricate his partner from the greedy demands of a blackmailer, Macrae's ex-wife, Linda, befriends her new neighbor Irene, who seems uncommonly interested in her flat's former tenant, a young girl who committed suicide. Or was it murder? Meanwhile, Macrae is trying to help his former driver's widow; chain-wielding punks are roaming the council flats; Irene is chatting up a real- estate agent who likes to pummel women; and Silver is blackmailing the blackmailer's girlfriend in the hopes that she'll get her boyfriend off Macrae's case. Three will die before this edgy study of parental devotion/abandonment/guilt wraps up. Sharply focused, intense, complete. The Macrae-Silver series (Thief Taker, Dirty Weekend) ranks high among the British procedurals with psychological undertones. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Never Die in January FROM THE PUBLISHER
About Alan Scholefield's debut mystery series, Publishers Weekly has said, "Detectives Macrae and Silver could become as indelible as Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse or Ruth Rendell's Wexford." Here, the Detective Superintendent George Macrae, a tough, old-fashioned copper, and his partner Detective Sergeant Leopold Silver, a suave, intellectual rookie, return in a chilling procedural that turns detective into suspect and then into victim. When Macrae's complicated private life reaches a crisis point, rumors begin to circulate that a senior police officer is "bent," and Leo Silver is told to investigate his own partner - in absolute secrecy. This well-crafted and closely observed thriller resonates with suspense from the first page to the surprising last, confirming Alan Scholefleld's reputation as a master storyteller.
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