Panicking Ralph

Ralph Ember, owner of the shady drinking club The Monty, longs to be respectable. The trouble is, his money comes from big-time drug dealing, where reputations are dubious and the risks are truly murderous. No wonder he’s nicknamed “Panicking Ralph,” because of the terrors that seize him at times of high danger.  Right now Ember is out to get his hands on the syndicate of the late Oliphant Kenward Knapp, who ruled what envious competitors called the best cocaine, crack, Ecstasy, and grass operation in Britain. Whom does he dare approach as a partner? In this city, alliances shift quickly, but it’s even riskier to set up as an independent. Meanwhile Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur, bypassing his jealous superior ACC Desmond Iles, is developing his own dangerous plan. As Harpur enters a dark and sometimes seductive world of greed, betrayal, and vengeance, there is no one who can pull him out if things go wrong. “[A] terrific series…. Get these books; settle into peril and chaos.“—Bloomsbury Review “Another rewarding installment in Bill James’s richly sardonic series about British cops and robbers.“—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review   

Author Biography

Bill James has been called “the Elmore Leonard of Britain’s underworld” (Kirkus Reviews) and has been named a “Master of Crime” in a mystery roundup by the London Sunday Times, which said, “There is nothing else quite like this series of police procedurals. James is concerned with the dilemmas and difficulties of policing Britain’s inner cities, and he addresses these in hard-edged narratives that leave readers gasping and flinching, praying the people in these stories never come to live in their streets.” In addition to the Harpur and Iles series, James is the author of other mystery series and a book on Anthony Powell. He lives in Wales.