"The detective is dead" because the old process of justice doesn't work any more. No one, including Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur, would testify at the trial; Harpur refused to name his informant. The three murderers who were being tried are part of a savage underworld struggle for the lucrative domain of the late drug baron Kenward Knapp. The story opens as the three assemble at Ralph Embers's seedy club "The Monty" to celebrate their acquittal. The key player behind the scenes is ambitious drug dealer Keith Vine, now an informant for Harpur. Vine's partners have been murdered...

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...

After a small-time criminal's house is firebombed, leaving the owner and his daughter dead, mistrust and uncertainty pervade the formerly well-managed streets: more drug dealers emerge and competition grows. With the failure of a once mutually beneficial relationship between cops and criminals, a battle for survival ensues. Bill James is a pointripe with humor, fast dialogue, and incisive wit, he offers entrance into the shocking and fascinating underbelly of a city and its inherent mysteries.

A deliciously witty addition to a classic series, The Girl with the Long Back heightens the urgency and pace of the tantalizing London underworld in which cops and criminals, and all of their clever asides, are sketched in fantastic detail.

For years Panicking Ralph Ember and Mansel Shale have run profitable drugs empires in peaceful cooperation with each other, and ACC Iles will blind-eye their trade as long as it keeps violence off the streets. But this happy arrangement is threatened by foreign dealers moving in and offering not just drugs, but punters exploited girls from Eastern Europe. And bloody gang warfare threatens as a scrabble for territory ensues."

A large, carefully plotted "cash-in-transit" raid goes hopelessly awry when armed policemen intervene to seize the perpetrators. Relatives and friends of the incarcerated are convinced that information the date, the time was leaked by the only man to escape before his arrest. Deputy Constable Colin Harpur and Assistant Constable Desmond Iles are delegated the job of hiding and protecting the informant and his family."