Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: London Interrupted by J. A. Marley

I am a huge fan of Parker, Junior Bender, and Wyatt, so I snapped up London Interrupted (SpellBound Books, 2023), the first book about professional thief Danny Felix by Irish author John A. Marley. Felix has had a successful career of robbing post offices, betting shops, and banks without being nabbed once. His lucky streak came to a screeching halt when Detective Inspector James Harkness caught him with the proceeds of his latest burglary. The scene with the money-sniffing dog was fun.

Instead of being arrested and sent to jail, as Felix expected, Harkness wants him to steal a large shipment of currency for him. Felix doesn’t like either of his options -- prison or the clearly lunatic Harkness -- and begins to carefully plot a course to escape both.

In the meantime Inspector Christine Chance of the west London police station is becoming suspicious of the recent run of good luck her team is encountering, taking down one criminal enterprise after another, each yielding an eye-watering amount of cash. While her colleagues simply assume that the wheel of fortune has turned in their favor for a change, Chance can’t rid herself of the idea that the arrests were set up somehow. Her attention is easily diverted these days though, as her eleven-year-old daughter is fading away in a hospice unit, where Chance is spending her nights.

Felix arranges a once-in-a-lifetime, history-making robbery that does not go according to anyone’s plan, including his.

I especially enjoy the meticulous preparation that goes into these heists the fictional professional robbers are always taking on. The intellect required to plot out a detailed and operational scheme is considerable, requiring identification of every conceivable thing that might go wrong. The body count in this book is significantly more than I anticipated; even the Parker books, as grim as they are, aren’t as lethal. Although it’s always a pleasure to see a crooked cop taken out of action. Recommended, especially for fans of crime fiction where traditional roles of good and bad actors are reversed.

 

·         Publisher: ‎SpellBound Books (January 19, 2023)

·         Language: ‎English

·         Paperback: ‎310 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎1739297806

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1739297800

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2023

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.