Good Cop, Bad Cop

Chris Sketty is one of those people who runs towards trouble not away from it, a trait that’s both a blessing and a curse in police work. His headlong bravery stood him in good stead the night of a terrorist atrocity in London in a crowded restaurant when masked gunmen opened fire on the customers. Sketty killed two of the men, but he was also badly injured in the attack.

Now, 14 years later, the husband of one of the victims wants Sketty to tell the truth about what happened that night, as well as about the events leading up to the murders. Wealthy business man Dr Ralph Teller has never been convinced by the official accounts and he can’t decide whether Sketty is a hero or the villain of the piece. He’s been researching the incident, and Sketty, for years, and he’s uncovered a lot of things that Sketty would prefer to keep hidden, so now it’s time for some cards to be put on the table, but even after all these years, Sketty is still a player in a very high stakes game, and the truth will only come at a price. A very high price.

I always pounce on Simon Kernick’s thrillers, knowing that, as ever, he’ll serve up some fast-paced action, an intriguing mystery and an entertaining mix of characters – both good and bad – all seasoned with a hefty dose of intrigue. In Good Cop Bad Cop, he chooses the unusual (for him) narrative device of having his main character relate much of the action under the guise of telling the truth to his interrogator, the mysterious Dr Teller. These passages are interspersed with shorter comments from Teller making it clear that he thinks Sketty is lying through his teeth. That certainly wouldn’t be surprising, as Kernick excels with unreliable narrators, so there’s a higher than average chance that Sketty isn’t telling the truth – or at least not the whole truth and nothing but the truth, m’lud.

His story takes him back to the very early days of his police career when he’s asked to go undercover to get close to a fellow officer in a unit specialising in the proactive policing of gang crime. The copper, Baz Cleaver, is believed to have links to a far-right terror group and it’s Sketty’s job to get enough intel to uncover the paymaster. The assignment leads him into some very murky waters into which he doesn’t so much dip his toes as dive in headlong.

The narrative is laden with rather overworked comments along the lines of ‘little did I know I was making the biggest mistake of my life’, which become both repetitive and unnecessary as it soon became clear that Sketty is extremely adept at the art of making rash – and wrong – decisions. I could have done with a little less heavy-handed foreshadowing, and I do wish crime and thriller writers would stop using cruelty to animals to demonstrate how nasty the bad guy is. In this instance there was no doubt at all that the villain was very unpleasant indeed, and the almost incidental death of two pets added absolutely nothing to the story.

Good Cop Bad Cop is another reliable winner in Kernick’s stable. There were a couple of twists I didn’t see coming and then right at the end, I couldn’t decide whether I was reading too much into an incredibly minor line or not. For me, the mark of an excellent thriller is something that leaves me questioning everything I thought I knew. I don’t think we’ll be seeing Chris Sketty again, and I don’t think we need to as this was a very satisfying standalone. But knowing Kernick, I wouldn’t be surprised if he does pop up somewhere …