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The Jas Anderson Series by Jack Dickson |
Banged Up
Rating: ****
Reviewer: Meg
Note: Please read them in order.
Gritty as they come best describes these books. Jas Anderson lives a Spartan existence in Glasgow, Scotland as a cop. As the books begin he is firmly closeted against a severely homophobic police department even though he lives with a young man whose life is generally unsavory and with whom s&m forms the core of their relationship. Underneath his tough, hard-boiled exterior, Jas is a man with a big heart whose compassion is often his undoing. He takes on other people's problems and is often betrayed. Like the detectives of film noir he walks that thin line between the legal and the criminal; his friends are often on the wrong side of the law because he himself comes from that side of the tracks. Being a cop and maintaining the alliances formed in childhood and youth is a tricky business for Jas. But he is a risk taker who has a strong survival instinct under the most difficult of gutter style circumstances.
One or two people who have written reviews on Amazon have had difficulty with the heavy Scottish street brogue. Perhaps because I grew up with the poetry of Robert Burns, I did not have a problem in general (yes to a very few specifics), and the accent seems necessary to me. It helps create the atmosphere of dank alleyways and back doors to buildings tourists probably never see. Drugs, prostitution, and murder are right hand companions to Jas and the language is as much a part of his world as the rest. From his dreary apartment to the mildew of the police station, the books are full of unpleasant smells and subdued, grayed colors.
Besides being a rough and grim murder mystery, Freeform (another word for Jazz as a play on his nickname) is the story of Jas' coming out as a gay man. The murder victim is his lover who is found dead in his bed, so his coming out to his department is involuntary and the s&m overtones only add to his fellow officers' deep seated prejudice. Suddenly he is a murder suspect, hounded from all sides, including friends, colleagues, and relatives. Very much alone in the world, he sets out to solve the crime.
Banged Up is slang for doing prison time. When a friend's brother is killed, Jas takes on the investigation only to be framed for the murder. His friend, in one of the book's many betrayals, refuses to refute the charges, to insure that Jas will have to go to prison, the only place the crime can be solved. Jas is forced to investigate behind the walls of a high security facility run by corrupt private corporation guards and the toughest of criminals. From the day he enters his life is under threat and only through an unlikely personal alliance is he able to survive, solve the crime, and ultimately expose the corruption. Survival comes first and no mean task in this situation. (Just after I read this book, I read a series of articles on prison rape in this country. Mr. Dickson did his research very well. I think he could have written the articles.) Not only is immediate survival a problem, but his long term survival is threatened by bareback rape and HIV/AIDS as punishment by inmates when he threatens their power structure.
There is some tough stuff here with lots of plot twists. The end of Banged Up is a twist in an of itself and a great setup for a sequel. I loved the ending. Poor Jas. Murphy's Law has never applied more appropriately. "What can go wrong, will." is an axiom of his existence.
