London Large: Blood on the Streets by Roy Robson
About the book
A corrupt system. A city in meltdown. A rogue cop, bent on revenge. Who will deliver justice?Blood on the Streets is the first in the London Large crime thriller series, featuring the exploits of Detective Inspector Harry ‘H’ Hawkins, an old-school London copper with over thirty years of besting villains under his belt. When a bloody international gang war threatens to rip the metropolis apart, ‘London’s top copper’ finds himself under siege as never before. Haunted by flashbacks of the horrors he experienced in the Falklands War, held accountable for the unstoppable wave of violent chaos that is turning the streets of his city red with blood, hounded and ridiculed by a media he cannot understand and continually thwarted by an establishment cover up of he knows not what, the big man is bang in trouble. As the chaos in London reaches boiling point can H, against all the odds, bring the streets under control, see through the fog of a high-level conspiracy and rescue his partner Amisha before she is killed by her ruthless kidnappers? And will he himself be forced to step outside the law to do so? If you like the hard-boiled, gritty and action packed novels of Martina Cole, Stephen Leather and Andy McNab you’ll love Blood on the Streets – let it take you through a thrilling rollercoaster ride through the dark underbelly of criminal London.
My Review
I was given a free copy of the book some time ago but was unsure if I would like it or not as I am not normally a fan of gang warfare and military fiction however, I have really enjoyed reading it and will be reading further books in this series.
The story begins back in time when Harry and Ronnie were serving in the Falkland’s. Ronnie saved Harry’s life and they therefore became blood brother forever sworn to help each other. Fast forward several years and Harry is a detective with a reputation for getting results by whatever means he sees fit and Ronnie is part of the elite of London when his wife and her sister are savagely murdered in St James Park. This puts in motion a sequence of events with far reaching consequences and brings the reader into the dark underworld of paedophiles, people trafficking and drug running making a web of crimes for the police department to untangle. Unfortunately, the discovery of Tara throws Harry back into the grip of Post Traumatic Stress and he ends up out of favour with his superiors in the police department.
It is a very well written book with characters who are very complex and develop very well throughout the book without needing a large amount of descriptive text which makes for a gripping, action packed read. The book examines many issues of relationships and the problems experienced by servicemen who try to live a civilian life and the impact this has on their families’.
Rating this was very difficult as it isnt my usual type of book but I cant really find much to mark it down on so it earns 4.7 rounded up to 5 stars and I look forward to reading book 2.
About the Authors
Roy and Garry Robson are, unsurprisingly, brothers from the Elephant and Castle, south east London. Their father (variously a pig farmer, cab driver, haulage contractor and general ducker and diver) and mother (homemaker, cook and doctor’s receptionist with a well-timed left hook) raised them and their siblings with some old fashioned south London working class values. These included hard work, respect for their elders and a willingness to duck and dive when required. They have endeavoured, with varying degrees of success, to maintain the values their parents tried to instill in them. One day, whilst enjoying a beer or two, they decided to write a Crime Thriller Series. They awoke the next day and were surprised to discover that they meant it. Roy lives in Bromley and works as a Service Delivery Manager for an International IT Consultancy. Garry lives in Krakow and is now, of all things, a sociology professor. Both career choices served as a source of confusion and humour to their parents, who were born and raised in the days before computers and sociology professors existed. Although Harry ‘H’ Hawkins, the protagonist of the London Large novels, shares some of their old-fashioned values, he is not based upon Garry or Roy, neither of whom would survive the first chapter of a Harry Hawkins novel. For more information visit londonlarge.com
