Synopsis
A case from his past is about to ruin Assistant Chief Constable Ned French's career. Heather Jonas, forced into a false confession to murder after a harrowing late-night interview session with French, has now served fifteen years of her twenty-year sentence. In all that time she's never appealed against her lot; but now the situation has changed. Someone else has confessed, and there's a citizen's rights campaigner on Heather's case who is determined to get to the truth.
Then, French gets a tip-off which could lead to the biggest coup of his working life. He is reliably informed that the notorious Corrigan cousins are masterminding a huge shipment of cocaine into Britain, and he knows where it's going to land. Will he be able to pull off the arrest, or will the events from his past overwhelm him before he has the chance? And is he, or is he not, a good detective?
Publishers Weekly
Keating (The Rich Detective) writes crime fiction that refuses to pander and consistently entertains as it unfolds, enigma after enigma. The title is deliberately ambiguous. Is Ned French, Assistant Chief Constable of Norchester, England, good in either a moral sense or a professional one? Early in his career, he and another cop coerced a young woman animal-rights activist into confessing to the car-bombing murders of a businessman and three children. Now that case has come back to haunt him. A man confesses to the crime before dying, casting a sinister shadow over French's career and character-one that bedding the crusading lawyer investigating the case fails to lift. Meanwhile, word comes from a stoolie that three London hoodlums named Martin (Marty), Bartholomew (Barty) and Francis (yes, Farty) are planning to hijack a drug shipment passing through Norchester. French wants to bust this present case before the media bust him for the past one. Is French a good man? Keating doesn't commit, but the question will stay with his readers. (Dec.)