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Candleland
Martyn Waites
Allison & Busby hardback, 254 pages, £16.99
Published March 2000
ISBN 0749004649
Review by Gerald Houghton (2000)

No one ever stayed poor from underestimating the huddled masses. Sitting comfortably? Good, then let’s check the signifiers. Cover’s all paint-smear stop lights, ‘malformed and unfinished in the sodium-etched dawn.’ That means British. Three parts, great slabs of italics. Moody chapter headings. Serious physical stuff, like we’re not the only ones with a tick-list. Rules followed. Genre obeyed.

And rules obeyed here too, so listen: Edinburgh kid ran away. Pappy’s a cop who knows she went to London. Drugs? Check. Kiddie prostitution? Check. Gangsters? Check, check, check. Throw in some watch-words – trawl, underworld – and all you have to do is play Scrabble for 254 pages. This reads like bad TV, alright. But wait, things can get worse: Waites has negotiated a cameo from Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy, star of those laughably inept Paul Charles novels. Be still my beating heart.

This should not stand. We have a right to expect better: British crime writing that is not itself criminal. Not something lacking in wit, imagination, or love of form or language. Not stodge that’s at best moribund, very likely pernicious.

This need not be. Where’s the British Woodrell? A Pelecanos? A misanthrope like Willeford? An historicist like Mosley? The lyricism of Gifford and Sallis? Our very own Elmore Leonard? There’s John Harvey and Resnick, I suppose. Humane, intelligent writing that really understands contemporary Britain. Waites, Charles and their sad, sorry underlings are but pale imitations of Harvey’s craft. Just say no. And keep saying it until somebody bloody listens.