All Through The Night

Tracking down a disreputable local GP with some documents his client wants back in his pocket, is all in a day's work for Barbados born private eye J T Ellington.

Then a stray remark made by the woman who hires him, that he should ask the missing doctor "where we can find the truth", proves to be of deadly importance. Truth isn't a random concept, she's an orphan that a lot of powerful people want to see come to harm. Finding her is only the start of Ellington's problems;  now he has to keep them both alive until he can work out who wants them, dead; and why.

I used to hold the opinion that British writers couldn't really do Private Eye [PI] novels, as the canvas they work on is perhaps too parochial; as well as the shadow that Chandler, Hammett, MacDonald and those who followed in their wake cast over the PI subgenre.

It is pleasing that M P Wright has come along to prove me wrong on both counts. This book is, literally, a world away from what came before; but it isn't hard to imagine Chandler, Hammett, and MacDonald enjoying it as an example of their sub-genre at its best. Not least because in J T Ellington, Wright has created a character who is an outsider twice over, first as a West Indian living in 60's Bristol and a man of conscience operating in a murky world.

Wright writes well about Britain in the sixties, though his view is miles away from the swinging Carnaby Street that most are familiar with - a place where prejudices run deep, and the after-glow of deference allows authority figures to act with impunity. 

As with any good thriller the action comes thick and fast with the chase element told at a blistering pace. None of this gets in the way of this being a well told, and thoughtful narrative involving fully-rounded characters you want to encounter again, and again.