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Teller has paid me the princely sum of a thousand pounds to come out to his mansion in the Oxfordshire countryside and talk to him, which is actually less than the going rate. Right now, everyone who’s anyone wants to interview me, and I’m a man in demand. I start to lift myself out of my armchair. My bad hip has become stiff from being sat down for the past ten minutes while we did the various small talk. Dr Teller doesn’t seem remotely perturbed, however. Instead, he’s actually smiling, the sly bastard, and there’s something predatory about it. ‘Before you go, Mr Sketty, you might want to see this.’ He reaches round in his wheelchair, moving slowly, and retrieves a plain cardboard folder from under the table, leaning forward to hand it to me.
An extract from Simon Kernick’s GOOD COP BAD COP An extract from Simon Kernick’s GOOD COP BAD COP
The story of a cop working cases and leading a dual life, spying on one of his colleagues is credibly written and involving. Sketty is well realised as an ordinary man battered by life and sinking into bad ways. It’s intriguing to wonder how we would act under the same pressure, isolated and alone. And yet as events lead up to the Villa Amalfi siege we are given more than one interpretation of events and so how compromised Sketty is remains a mystery. Chris Sketty has been transferred to a new unit, not entirely of his own choosing, and to make matters worse he is undercover. He would be considered a rat, if his colleagues discovered he was spying on one of their own. Sketty has been tasked with infiltrating a British terrorist organisation, that also includes members of the police, and he needs to befriend one of these and be invited into the organisation. He has to get close to DS Cleaver who is thought to be a member of the terrorist organisation. As Sketty works with Cleaver he gets involved in taking down estate gangs and drugs rings. It’s a long time before a particularly nasty assault on a young girl bonds him to Cleaver. Eventually he offers Sketty a way into a clandestine group dedicated to weeding out criminals by any means. Sketty thinks this might get him closer to Roman. SO15 are waiting patiently but they aren’t aware of all the things Sketty has been going through undercover. Like I say it started very strongly and was instantly into the novel. Good plot and an exciting finale made this a good read.However if you like a thrilling story with a dramatic and satisfying ending then this is the book for you.
Good Cop Bad Cop by Simon Kernick | Waterstones Good Cop Bad Cop by Simon Kernick | Waterstones
Sketty injured in the line of duty and praised and created by the press as a hero but he has been slowly robbed of everything he held dear - his family, his career and now he faces yet another ... issue. Not everyone believes his hero status is as deserved as the public may have been led to believe, is he an hero, or was he a bad cop ! The characters were all extremely shallow and predictable, almost as if they were based entirely on stereotypes. The decisions made by the characters felt as if they were made only to move forward with the plot and prolong the book. It started strong, and I had high hopes, but once it started to fizzle out, it didn't stop fizzling out. Not one character was likeable (other than Trevor, the cat), and I know that doesn't always matter, but it felt like I was supposed to be sorry for Sketty, and I just felt nothing but annoyance towards him. Sketty's constant justification of his brutality and violence made it extremely difficult to feel anything positive towards him. The typical British police procedural can be a bit staid, perhaps a little too trusting of the inherent honesty of British policing, but there are no rose tinted spectacles here. This is riveting, raw and fresh. Apart from the hunt for Roman and Sketty’s story this novel has a strong feel of London and the gang culture in the city. A layered thriller that is genuinely chilling and gritty as hell. //London, corrupt, cops: Like Line of Duty? Luther The Calling Neil Cross, The Divinities Parker Bilal// I can promise you, Dr Teller,’ I tell him, ‘I would have preferred not to have been a hero. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
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I struggled to get through this book and almost left it unfinished multiple times, but it was gifted to me, so I struggled on. I wasn't going to leave a review, but this book currently averages 4.13 stars, and I feel like bringing it down a little out of spite. At the same time, as the car pulled away from the kerb and I realised I couldn't breathe, Cleaver said the words I'd thought I'd never hear on this assignment, because I'd been so careful. Chris Sketty spends a lot of time thinking about the before and after of events that have defined his life, his choices and the paths he decides to take along the way. It takes him a while to comprehend that many of those have been manipulated and mapped out for him. Knowing his predictable behaviour patterns have made it easier for others to do so - or do they? Dr Ralph Teller is in his 70s, MS has confined him to a wheelchair, but grief has driven him to investigate the night of his wife’s death. She was one of the victims of the siege. Teller has painstakingly collated information, interviewed witnesses and reconstructed the peripheral lives of those involved, finally arriving at a showdown with Sketty, the lynchpin of the whole affair. Faced with the evidence Sketty is forced to open up but how many layers of obfuscation, lying and self-justification will be admit to. Will he really come clean. Sketty isn’t the man everyone thinks he is but just how dirty is he?
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