John WAINWRIGHT – The Hard Hit

1974
333 17413 5
225p
Rating: ***** *****

I was a keen John Wainwright fan when younger and read all his books about Yorkshire police at least once. One of my big regrets was not managing to read them in sequence. Re-visiting this one I recalled the outcome too easily to make it ‘exciting’ but the style still made it well worth a second (or maybe even third) read. I have rated it as I would have done first time around – a full ten!

Set in Yorkshire – as are most of his books – this thriller revolves around the life of a paid killer, David Fleischer, who finds himself hired for a mission that has too many personal associations for him to feel comfortable with the task. A retired Charlie Ripley makes an (almost) cameo appearance.

JOHN WILLIAM WAINWRIGHT was a rear gunner in World War II, after which he spent twenty years as a policeman in Yorkshire. He wrote eighty crime novels between 1965 and 1992, sometimes under the pseudonym 'Jack Ripley'.