Fools Gold

Sam Batford is a self-confessed, successful, moral - and bent - undercover copper with a sense of justice that puts his suspicious and vengeful boss to shame. In this, the 3^rd of the Sam Batford crime thrillers, following Rubicon and Stoned Love, he faces gangland organised crime that morphs into a deadly, international Organised Crime Group.

Fools Gold has an inescapable element of reality, which is exciting and disconcerting in equal measure. The author intimately understands how a police force operates at these levels, but the book is a far cry from a standard police procedural.

Detective Sergeant Batford has spent years burning the candle at both ends, reaping the rewards of eye-watering amounts of hard drugs and cash under the watchful eye of his mentor and co-conspirator Detective Superintendent Mike Hall. Fools Gold opens with Hall’s funeral: a self-inflicted death moments before the corrupt senior was about to be arrested. Hall’s ill-gotten gains fall into the lap of his protégé, and Sam Batford is not one for sharing the spoils.

The DS is assigned a new task: uncovering and trapping a gang involved in violently robberies of security vans. His new boss knows who the gang members are, but the police need to catch the villains in the act. Sam Batford slides undercover: he has a successful track record, has just stayed alive and, as far as one of his seniors is concerned, is expendable – collateral damage for a successful operation.

Fools Gold gallops, canters, trots and careers madly, often in high horsepower cars, towards a finale that is both surprising and satisfying. The style of writing is reminiscent of American crime novels of the late 20^th century, but with a realism that captures the reader and takes them on a tour of London as well as deep into the psyches of a range of unsavoury characters. Gangland violence is not confined to robbery. Sam Batford faces prostitution and trafficking, drug factories and the constant threat of firearms wielded by thugs with no moral compass.