Insights into worlds of crime

Press, 1 February 1986, Page 20

Insights into worlds of crime

In the Underworld. By Laurie Taylor, Unwin, 1985. 188 pp. $1295 (paperback). You’d Bettor Believe It. By Bill James. Century Hutchinson, 1985. 157 pp. $28.50 (Reviewed by Ken Strongman) It Is unusual to consider works of fact and of fiction within one review, but the line between the two forms is becoming increasingly indistinct. Both of these books provide an insight into the world of crime and are convincingly authentic. Laurie Taylor’s self-important ingenuousness in the face of professional criminals can only be genuine. And the confident simplicity with which Bill James tells his tale can only come from inside knowledge. Laurie Taylor is Professor of Sociology at the University of York and is well-known, in England as a broadcaster. Surprisingly, he is the first criminologist to have had conversations with working criminals, with his tape-recorder running. He did this in London’s underworld, under the comforting arm of ex-bank-robber and hard man John McVicar who is still well respected in his manor. Taylor sat in pubs, clubs, and living rooms decorated with gear that had fallen off the back of some very upmarket trucks, in a style which might be

1 described as post gold lame chic. He 5 listened to confidence tricksters, bank robbers, heisters, drug dealers, and C' even flirted with gangsters. i, Laurie Taylor is a good populariser and “in the .Underworld” is a readable book as well as being of some use to social scientists; It has two problems, f The first is that it does not quite go , far enough. It is frustrating to have 5 the values of the professional criminal i touched bn, but not explored in depth. > For instance, the comparison between b those who steal or rob partly because J it allows them to live on the edge, and s those who have a dispassionate, s Workmanlike amorality, is only hinted i at.' I The second problem is that Laurie j Taylor cannot keep himself out of it. He constantly tells us of his own f reactions to the people he meets and : to the places in which he meets them, i At one level he is putting himself s down, being open about his own lack 1 of underworld sophistication. At i,. another level this is attempting to get i the reader on his side, the side of e convention looking through the bars of 1 the cage at the exhibits within. S 1 Simultaneously, he is saying “Look at r me, I can slip in and out through the i 3 bars.” At the least, ail this is i irrelevant to the book, and at the t worst it detracts from Taylor’s ! objectivity.

“In the Underworld” is an interesting book, but it is no more convincing in its authenticity than Bill James’s “You’d Better Believe It.” This is a novel of crime in a provincial town, an armed bank robbery set up by some hard men from “up the motorway.” Chief Super Colin Harpur is a high flyer in the local police and is very nearly as hard-bitten as those whose collars he seeks to feel. Together with his various narks and grasses he is a match, both for the criminals and for his superiors, whose time-honoured motives are having a quiet life, keeping the homos (from the Home Office) happy, and aiming at knighthoods. “You’d Better Believe It” rings, true and tells a tough tale of tough people on both sides of the law. They are believable though because they are human and have weaknesses. Also, every detail of criminal activity, police procedure, and grassing which overlaps with “In the Underworld” is exactly the same. The relationship between the grass and the police, and the grass and the criminals, is intricate and integral to crime and its detection. "Ypu’d Better Believe It” is .as fascinating an analysis of this as “In the Underworld” is of crime in general, and since it is fiction the author does not intrude as much.