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Saturday’s Child

Name: Saturday’s Child
Author: Ray Banks
ISBN: 9780156034579

by Ray Banks

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Overview

Cal Innes is fresh out of prison, working out of a gym closet as a private investigator, and trying to sever his ties to local gang lord “Uncle”Morris Tiernan. But when Tiernan hires him to track down a rogue casino dealer who’s absconded with a hefty chunk of cash, Innes is thrust into a cat-and-mouse game with Tiernan’s pill-popping son,Mo—a game that turns ever more deadly as the case points north to Newcastle.With Tiernan’s son on his tail and a Manchester cop determined to put Innes back on the spurs, Saturday’s child definitely has to work hard to keep living.The explosive first book in a four-book series featuring the down-at-heels private eye Cal Innes.

About the Author, Ray Banks

Ray Banks has been a double-glazing salesman, a croupier, a dole monkey, and a disgruntled temp. The author of The Big Blind , Saturday’s Child , Sucker Punch , and No More Heroes , he was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, and now lives in Edinburgh.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

British author Banks fulfills the promise of 2000's The Big Blind with this tough and assured crime novel. Callum Innes, recently released from prison, works as an unlicensed PI in Manchester, England. His brother, Declan, has gone home to Edinburgh to kick his heroin habit, and Innes is determined to stay straight this time as well. Morris Tiernan, local crime boss and Innes's former employer, however, insists that he complete one final job: tracking down the blackjack dealer who has disappeared with Tiernan's 16-year-old daughter, Alison, and a sizable chunk of his money. Complicating matters is Tiernan's son, Morris Junior (or "Mo"), a psychotic speed freak, who vows to overthrow his father's underworld reign. Mo despises Innes, envies the respect his father gives him and decides to show them both what he's really capable of. The results, inevitably, are both comically inept and violent. Some American readers may struggle a bit with Tiernan's street dialect, but like Ken Bruen and Allan Guthrie, Banks is updating the noir novel with an utterly original sensibility. (Jan.)

Kirkus Reviews

British noir at its darkest and meanest. Cal Innes, who did a prison stretch to protect his junkie brother and keep the Tiernan family from coming after him if he grassed, once again finds himself in Manchester uber-gangster Morris Tiernan's sights. Would he please, as a small favor, hustle up to Newcastle to find Rob Stokes, who thought nobody would notice if he absconded with gambling profits and with Tiernan's "wee whore" of a daughter, Alison? Morris's psycho son Mo, who's quite receptive to the idea of offing his dad and taking over one of these days, is miffed and then some when he's not asked to catch Stokes himself. He remedies that oversight by heading for Newcastle with his own goon squad, Rozzie and Baz. Who'll find Stokes first? Some romantic ideals about saving Alison would kill Innes were it not for his 100 percent blood alcohol level and a failing grade in anger management. Banks handles plot U-turns with the bravado of a NASCAR driver, and the fadeout finds Cal more firmly entrenched within the whims of Morris, the wiles of Alison and the blank staring craziness of Mo. Banks (The Big Blind, 2004) has an ear for the vernacular as sharp as, but a shade or two bluer than, that of George V. Higgins. Let the squeamish stick with Tony Soprano; this is real tough stuff.