Good Cop Bad Cop by Jim Alexander

Crime novel.

“Tartan noir with a delicious twist,” as the press release calls it.

Summary: Good Cop Bad Cop opens with DI Brian Fisher interviewing a murder suspect. Alone. (Note: If this sounds like a bad idea, it is.) Fisher is effective at keeping the suspect off-kilter, but he’s clearly a bit off-kilter himself, even as his good cop self. His inner “bad cop” arrives, throws him into attack mode, and during the ensuing scuffle, part of the suspect’s earlobe is bitten off. Though the scuffle was caught on video, somehow the recording equipment is damaged and what happened isn’t fully captured. Though the police administration are puzzled (or are they?) by this, they don’t ask him, and he doesn’t tell. Even an official investigation by a committee he dubs the “Three Wise Men” doesn’t result in changes.

He does, however, get a partner. He’s always been the loner in the force, but DS Julie Spenser is now along to supervise and/or get in the way. He’s also required to meet with a police psychologist, Dr. Dawn, to investigate the inner workings of his brain.

Fisher doesn’t have control over when the bad self arrives or reacts to circumstances. His good self is truly a good person: he wants to behave with integrity. He’s appalled at the crimes his bad cop self commits in his investigations. But can the good Fisher confess his alter-ego’s crimes? What–or who–will win?

Issues

(I can’t really say that it didn’t work, only that there are some drawbacks.)

The slang.

Some of the slang won’t be obvious to American readers unless they favor Scottish crime novels. Fortunately, I’ve read enough Ian Rankin to know most of the words. I still had to look up a few.

  • Numpty is “a stupid or ineffectual person.”
  • Manky, according to the Urban dictionary, is “Scottish slang word to describe a situation, person or object in a poor state of affairs. Commonly used in Scottish bars to describe the state of the toilets or glasses.” Eww.
  • A Ned is, again according to Urban Dictionary, a “Non Educated Delinquents, have a habit of standing around on street corners drinking 98% of the worlds supply of Buckfast, wearing enough cheap gold to make a prostitute blush whilst thinking that tucking their shell suit bottoms into their socks is the hieght of fashion. Also like to shout slipknot at anyone who doesn’t conform to the above.”

Is this a weak point for a novel set in Scotland to use Scottish slang? Not at all. I may have to incorporate a few of these into my vocabulary! I just thought this was worth mentioning.

Point of view changes

This one’s tricky. Certain chapters and parts of chapters are told from DS Julie Spenser’s 1st person point of view. The view might change from Fisher to Spenser and back again in the course of a few pages. (This doesn’t happen often.) The sections aren’t labelled with names. Though they are broken into clear sections with a separator, it’s not always immediately clear who is speaking when both characters use 1st person POV. It might take a few lines before I realize that it’s Spenser’s view or Fisher’s view.

What works

Strong narrative voice

This voice captured me from the first sentence. Alexander drew me in with his opening chapter. The second person point of view was effective, as it makes the action feel immediate and relevant but also implicates us, the reader, in the crimes that we refuse to see.

Characterization

Brian Fisher, obviously, is the person (people?) Alexander dives deepest inside. He’s a master of self-deception, yet he’s capable of surprising insights. He blames his job for his thoughts and persuades himself that there’s nothing he can do about it. Yet he imposes a “three strikes” rule on himself: three murders and he’s out. He’ll turn himself in, he tells himself. But will he? we wonder, or will bad Fisher silence the good Fisher?  

There’s a lot of savage violence. (This is not a book for the faint of heart!) Some of the violence comes from Fisher, our hero/villain. I’ve written before about my mixed feelings about graphic violence. What makes it bearable is that Fisher, the good Fisher, truly loathes the actions of the bad Fisher. And he is aware of his second self:

The other me, he was always there. I was always aware of him burrowing, snuggling and lurking, just at the back of my head. (pg. 132)

He also has other good insights:

. . . everybody was hiding something. The good and the bad stashed away inside of us, in safe keeping, at least for some of the time (pg. 139)

Ah, I wonder, but is this another one of good Fisher’s self-deceptions, his way of normalizing the evil inside him?

But Fisher’s not the only one who is well characterized. DS Julie Spenser has a character arc of her own. Her mother suffers from dementia and no longer knows her daughter. Spenser’s worries and thoughts about memory, identity, and what makes us who we are ties in with Fisher’s problems.

The plot

Let’s just say that there are twists I didn’t see coming. (I’m usually good at guessing plot twists.) I won’t say anything more. No spoilers!

Bottom line:

This is a well-written, well-plotted novel. If you can handle the violence, read it.

Bonus tips for writers

Don’t be afraid to include a dream if it is needed and works in your novel’s context. Dreams, like prologues, tend to get a bad rap in the writing world. Among other crimes, they’re accused of being lazy writing, ineffective, only inserted to show the character’s troubles, etc., etc. But this book has one of the most effective dream sequences I’ve read. It’s a bit on the long side. But for me, this sequence works well for two reasons:

  1. Part of it is genre. This isn’t completely “realistic” fiction, yet it’s not straight fantasy, either. In a way, it reminded me of a graphic novel minus the graphics (if that makes sense!): it was highly descriptive yet packed with action. This dream sequence seemed like something I might find in a graphic novel. I’m not certain why I think this–I don’t read graphic novels–but it felt “right.”
  2. Alexander squashes in every major element/character/symbol in the weird, nightmarish world of Brian Fisher’s internal landscape. Things appear, only to change into some other person or thing, often in ways that reflect a different aspect of themselves than we’d seen before. In a novel where the protagonist changes from one person into another, it made sense that people/things in his dream morph into different things, too.