Review - Like a Bullet by Andrew Cartmel

Andrew Cartmel
Titan Books, 8 July 2025
Available as: PB, 304pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803367941

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Like a Bullet to consider for review.

The return of Cordelia Stanmer, aka The Paperback Sleuth (she's had cards made and everything) is always welcome. Unlike her counterpart in the world or rare record collecting, Cartmel's Vinyl Detective, Cordelia's got few scruples (she's certainly up for a bit of burglary) when it comes to securing down a rare, pristine paperback volume, so life is always exciting when she's around. These books are a third mystery, a third scavenger hunt, and, perhaps, the other third has a distinct flavour of mild hedonism, Cordelia employing her gains in the pursuit of pleasures both licit and... not. 

In Like a Bullet, Cordelia's been engaged by wealthy, retired rock star Erik Make Loud (known to those who've been reading the Detective's adventures) to locate a copy of the legendary 1960s novel Commando Gold. This is a book so rare that online wars break out over whether it even exists. How can she resist that challenge (and the promised reward for achieving it)? 

Especially since, on acquiring the previous books in the series, she finds them eminently readable (not really what she'd expected from an author called "Butch Raider").

As ever, though, Cordelia doesn't really know what she's getting into. Someone really, really doesn't want that book found. There's more at stake here than a musty, mouldering volume of war stories. Soon, she' dodging a very determined enemy... one very familiar with the kinds of techniques described in the books.

As ever, I had great fun with Cartmel's latest. Cordelia's a very distinct, very well-formed character, more of a loner than the Detective (while she eventually has to ask for help in this story from her ex hard-man landlord Edwin, she generally handles things herself rather than travelling with an entourage like the Detective). She's a planner, often (but not always) one step ahead of everyone else. She inhabits the same slightly raffish south west London. Cartmel also has a good eye for location and geography, mapping out backstreets, pubs and routes into and out of London, as well as giving us glimpses of the strange characters (never quite too strange to be believable) who live there.

An excellent addition to the series.

For more information about Like a Bullet, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Death in Fine Condition by Andrew Cartmel

Death in Fine Condition  
Andrew Cartmel
Titan Books, 6 June 2023 
Available as: PB, 336pp, audio, e  
Source: Purchased
ISBN(PB): 9781789098945

Fans of Cartmel's Vinyl Detective stories will feel at home with The Paperback Sleuth - not only does she (the Sleuth, Cordelia) live the same slightly raffish, hedonistic London lifestyle - there are plenty of descriptions of nice lunches and other activities here - but the story is set in the same universe, her path crossing with  those of familiar characters from the series.

The setup is thought slightly different. While the Detective tends to stumble on mysteries which sidetrack him from his vocation of sourcing rare records, pretty much everything that happens here arises form Cordelia's own, shall we call it, imaginative approach to property rights in the paperbacks which she craves (and deals in). We see this early when she's adding an author signature to a copy she plans to sell, but there's plenty more chicanery to come and it's this that places threatens Cordelia's safety, an outcome signalled several times in the book.

I loved Cordelia as a character, even if one can't approve of all (or much!) that she does. Her knowledge of classic pulp paperbacks is impeccable, as it her determination once she fixes on a goal. There's also a sense of naivety about what she might be getting into - Cartmel often lets the reader get a step or two ahead of her so there's the fun of seeing her catch up when things turn nasty and this does ramp up the tension. It's also fun seeing how she deals with several characters from Vinyl Detective, her relationships with them adding depth and nuance to the portrayal we're familiar with from those books. 

The Detective himself gets short shrift, dismissed as the unmemorable boyfriend of a woman that Cordelia rather fancies - as well as her passion for paperbacks, she's also got her eye an another woman, The Woman (do keep up!) who's seen, mysteriously, out and about as Cordelia goes about her business. She's as ruthless in that pursuit as she is with the books, the two strands providing plenty of entertainment, surprises and twists as the story moves towards its climax.

Overall, an engaging book which builds on the success of Vinyl Detective without simply becoming a cone of those stories.

For more information about Death in Fine Condition, see the publisher's website here.  

Review - Victory Disc by Andrew Cartmel

Cover design by Martin Stiff

Victory Disc (Vinyl Detective, 3)
Andrew Cartmel
Titan Books, 8 May 2018
PB, 432pp

I'm grateful to Titan for an advance copy of this book.

This is the 3rd in the series featuring the (unnamed) Vinyl Detective, his girlfriend Nevada, annoying best friend Tinkler, getaway driver Clean Head and, of course, cats Turk and Fanny. The setup is well established - the Vinyl Collector hunts down old records, and his commissions typically involve him in a historical mystery, which has enough echoes in the present to threaten considerable danger.

Victory Disc is no exception, but takes the gang out of their comfort zone (if being threatened, drugged, burgled or kidnapped can be so described) as the hunt is for even older and rarer records than before - specifically for wartime recordings of the RAF's Flare Path Orchestra, a band of serving airmen purportedly set up to compete with the Glenn Miller Orchestra. The Flare Path Orchestra wasn't, of course, real, the Miller band (of course) was. Yet Cartmel has an amazing knack for describing  (totally fictitious) music so convincingly that you're almost there, listening to it. Very evocative, as is the name Flare Path Orchestra itself which made me think of Terrance Rattigan's play Flare Path, also set against the background of bomber crews in the Second World War.

Of course there's a mystery to be unravelled here, the murder of a young woman, Gillian Gadon, during the war, for which a young RAF officer was hanged. (I strongly approved of the fact that in this story Nevada insists on using Gadon's name, making her more than simply an object of male violence). This backstory intertwines with a commission, in the present, by the wealthy Miss Honeyland, to hunt down any serviving records by the Orchestra whose leader was her father, "Lucky" Lucian Honeyland. (One slight gripe: Honeyland's is described as "Colonel" - not an RAF rank, I think). That sets The Vinyl Detective (or the Shellac Shamus, as Nevada describes him now that he's delving into the age of 78s) tracking down surviving members of the band, widening his knowledge of the wartime bombing campaign (at the heart of the book there is, among other things, a compassionate argument about the cruelty of that campaign and its effect both on German cities and on the aircrew themselves).

This is Cartmel at his best, sending the team off on a series of rackety day trips to obscure corners of Kent, portraying the foibles and varied lives of the surviving band/ squadron members while throwing in an eclectic gallery of record eccentric collectors, menacing thugs, murder historians and, inevitably, more cats (poor Abner...) It all moves pretty briskly and - another thing I like in these books - the crew behave intelligently, understanding (from previous adventures) that there may be danger out there. Not that this makes the book staid or boring - it has a pretty scary climax and the revelations that follow complete a satisfying story, bringing the crimes of the past right into the present and showing how evil persists. Indeed there is something of a sense of urgency to the story and a demand to question appearances and remain vigilant. Another strong theme is erasure, particularly of artists (that's a vein consistently explored in all these books).

In all this was an exciting and atmospheric mystery and a good addition to the Vinyl Detective's casebook. I note that a further instalment, Flip Back, is due in 2019 and I wish the anonymous record-finder and his partner plenty of good, fresh coffee and decent food in their next outing.

Final note: while Cartmel avoids using the Collector's name - how long can he keep that up? - he does use pronouns, so I'm not just falling into a lazy assumption that the character is male!

For more about the book see the publisher's website here.

Review - The Vinyl Detective: The Run-Out Groove

The Run-Out Groove (Vinyl Detective, 2)
Andrew Cartmel
Titan Books, 9 May 2017
PB, 416pp

I'm grateful to Lydia at Titan Books for sending me a copy of this.

The Vinyl Detective is back, accompanied by girlfriend Nevada, friends Tinkler, "Stinky" Stanmer and Clean Head and the cats, Fanny and Turk. If you've read the first part of these adventures you'll know what to expect - a search for a rare record crossing over into detective work about, in this case, a dead 60s popstar and her missing son,  peril, wisecracks and a tapestry of (mainly) London streets, housing estates and record shops.

The two books are very much in the same vein (perhaps this one is slightly less violent - though a key character does come to a sticky end in a pretty shocking way) and, with the setting and characters established, Cartmel has more time and space to develop their relationships: the Detective and Nevada are a touching couple and his bickering with Tinkler is fun.

Slightly less well defined are the clients in this case, Lucy Tegmark and John "the Colonel", the brother of the deceased star. They're pretty hostile to one another but I never quite got why. That said, I didn't warm to the Colonel anyway, especially after his pretty unpleasant response to a woman who is rather on the large side.

But. The client brings the mystery, the mystery is what drives this genre: here it's a devilish one with a real touch of tragedy. When Valerian died and her son disappeared, a bother and sister were left behind and they clearly never came to terms with the loss. Now, it's time to try and get closure. But there's someone out there who'd rather things were left open...

I liked the way, in this book, Cartmel has his protagonists actually learn from their experiences in the earlier. Yes, the atmosphere and the general setup is similar but they are determined not to get caught out as they did before (cue a lot of rather clever dialogue as they assess whether they really are, or aren't, residing in "Paranoia Heights". This may be connected with still being rather haunted by those experiences - the Detective himself certainly is early on in the story.

But of course history never repeats itself exactly. The threat here is rather different, and not obvious. I certainly didn't figure out who was behind until very late in the day: Cartmel weaves the story with so many red herrings and false turns that I don't think you will, either.

In short: an excellent continuation of the series. Give me more!

(By the way, Cartmel collaborates with Ben Aaronovitch on the Rivers of London comics. I think I saw a couple of RoL Easter eggs in here - perhaps you'll spot more....?)

Review: The Vinyl Detective - Written in Dead Wax

The Vinyl Detective: Written in Dead Wax
Andrew Cartmel
Titan Books, 10 May 2016
PB, ebook, 474pp
Source: Review copy from publisher

He is the record collector — a connoisseur of vinyl, hunting out rare and elusive LPs. His business card describes him as the “Vinyl Detective” and some people take this more literally than others...

They call him The Chef. You don't want to know why, but if you get in his way, you might find out.

I found this book the perfect confection of breakneck, page turning detective noir (or perhaps, detective gris?) on the one hand and absorbing, geeky exposition of a subculture on the other. The subculture is, of course, that of the vinyl record collector: despised by most until recently these records are now mainstream sought after items (you can buy them again at HMV!) But the world of obsessives, disc hunters and commercial middlemen is less well known and (on the evidence of this book) as varied and fascinating as any of the other niche cultures appealing to (mainly) male collectors. Think stamps, with much more storage space needed, or vintage bikes with less. (I don't mean that to be patronising - these subcultures add to the richness of life and stave of the encroaching beigeness of the modern world).

It's a culture that Cartmel portrays with real affection and seemingly exhaustive knowledge and its hidden corners and byways provide a fascinating setting for his protagonist who must delve into a decades old mystery as he searches for a very particular, very rare, record. There's an urgency to this. Our hero is basically penniless and his heating has failed, threatening him and his cats with hypothermia - that record will pay his bills for months, if he can find it - but more to the point, anyone who comes into contact with it - or who may have done so - acquires a bad habit of dying. The only way out is to take to the car boot sales, the charity shops and the backstreet emporia and get crate diving.

Of course there's a beautiful woman involved, setting things in motion (although Nevada is anything but a device to motivate the hero: try saying that to her face). Of course there is double dealing, and a mysterious, all-powerful enemy... But above all there is fun by the bucketload. Once Cartmel gets things going (and he does that pretty quickly) the story continues at a breakneck pace, throwing out clues, red herrings by the slabful and introducing a range of colourful contacts and low life figures in and on the fringes of the record hunting community. And not all of them die.

There is in the end a serious and sad story behind all the mayhem, highlighting a real issue in the history of jazz and much other popular music - but I'll say no more about that because spoilers. Above all though this is absolutely cracking entertainment and I'd highly recommend it. I'm delighted to see that there are followups planned - Cartmel has found a joyously different setup for (hopefully) a string of fun and highly readable crime adventures.

I'm grateful for a review copy of this book. It's published on 10 May but copies were already in the shops on 2nd (see photo!)