Brit Grit Alley

Brit Grit Alley features news and updates on what's happening down British crime fiction's booze and blood soaked alleyways.

By Paul D. Brazill 

This week down Brit Grit Alley, I take a look at:

The Call Inness Quartet by Ray Banks.


Ray Banks is one of my favourite British writers and I was first introduced to his work via the Call Inness quartet. Never read em? Well here’s what you’re missing out on. 

Saturday’s Child - Cal Inness is fresh out of the slammer when he’s hired by gangster Morris Tiernan to track down a casino dealer who has done a runner with a wad of cash. Innes is a compelling, realistic anti-hero and Saturday's Child is a cracking blend of social realism and character driven crime fiction.

Donkey Punch - Banks brilliantly follows up Saturday's Child with an even more hard-hitting tale which drags the increasingly self-destructive Cal Inness across the Atlantic to Los Angeles, where he has to take care of a troubled,  up-and -coming boxing star.

No More Heroes - As PI Cal Inness' personal life spirals further out of control, racial tensions and violence escalate during Manchester's hottest summer. Banks takes the two gritty crime novels that started this series to a new, intense level. This one goes up to eleven.

Beast Of Burden - Banks goes where most other crime writers fear to even contemplate in this powerful conclusion to his series. Inness is a physical and emotional wreck when he is hired to find Mo Tirenan, who has gone missing.  Dirty realism taken to its harrowing, brilliant extreme.

All in all, a  fantastic, short, sharp crime fiction series. 

Find out more about Ray Banks and his books here. 

There'll be more carrryings on down Brit Grit Alley next week.

Spinetingler Award nominee Paul D. Brazill has had short fiction published in various magazines and anthologies, including The Mammoth Books Of Best British Crime 8 and 10,and he has edited the anthologies True Brit Grit & Off The Record 2– with Luca Veste - and Drunk On The Moon 1 and 2. His books The Kelly, Affair, Red Esperanto, Death On A Hot Afternoon, 13 Shots Of Noir, Vin Of Venus (with David Cranmer & Garnett Elliot ) and Snapshots are out now, and his novellas The Gumshoe and Guns Of Brixton will be out pretty damned  soon. His blog is here.