Resnick Resurrected

Two months ago, when we first reported on UK novelist John Harvey winning this year’s Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, we noted as well that Britain’s Five Leaves Publications had commissioned from him a new story featuring his popular protagonist Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick (last seen in Last Rights (1998). Harvey now tells more about that project in his online newsletter:

As I said in the last newsletter, the Nottingham-based Five Leaves Press have commissioned a new story from me for their new Crime Express series of single, longish stories which will be issued in editions of around 1,000 copies. Some of you out there will be pleased to know that this features none other than Charlie Resnick, still labouring on within Notts CID and living, happily enough, with his former sergeant Lynn Kellogg, now an inspector in the Force Crime Directorate [and making a brief appearance as such in ... Gone to Ground]. My plan is for Charlie to meet up with another of my fictional characters, former police officer and professional soccer player and currently private eye, Jack Kiley, who makes the short journey from north London to Nottingham in the course of his investigation into the disappearance of a Iraq veteran who has gone missing with some unaccounted for arms and ammunition.

Jack and Charlie will find some common ground in Kiley’s one appearance at the Notts County ground, coming off the bench for Charlton Athletic in what was then the League Cup, and after a few shared pints and a few more reminiscences, proceed from a basis of mutual respect.

If all goes well, and the partnership feels right, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that they might both feature in the next-to-be-written novel. Not a full-scale Resnick novel as such, perhaps, but one in which he has far more than the walk-on role the [Frank] Elder books allowed.

Five Leaves’ Web site makes no mention yet of a pub date for Harvey and Resnick’s Crime Express debut. But we live in hope ...

(Hat tip to Euro Crime.)