Arena

A reviewer called Peter James’s first novel, "Dead Letter Drop" (1981), a silly book and it is. The style is over-clever and is an odd mix of Americanisms and British English, the latter aspect over-stuffed with metaphors. It is quite different from the controlled style which James subsequently worked out for his successful Roy Grace series. A contrast might be drawn between Ian Rankin”s spy novel, “Watchman”, published early in a career which came to be based on detective fiction. Rankin gets the 1980s context mostly right and doesn’t rely on flashy writing and absurd turns of plot. Peter James would have been better advised to have left this novel out of print.