Just because they are entrusted with enforcing the law doesn’t mean that some individual police officers don’t commit crimes. That’s where Police Inspector Rupert Jones comes in. He’s not only a lazy performer as a cop, but he’s not very smart, and is also beset by a long series of disasters, of his own making.

Rupert is divorced because he got caught having an affair by his ex-wife, and he also impregnated his mistress during the affair. As a result, he’s broke, lives in a caravan park (trailer park for non-Commonwealth country readers) where he is months past due on his rent, and drives an ancient, undependable car.

As if Rupert Jones isn’t contemptible enough when we meet him in the opening chapters, he soon becomes more wretched when he stumbles across a serious car crash while avoiding work. The driver is at death’s door but still alive when Jones arrives and discovers a carryall bag in the wrecked car containing millions in cash. It occurs to him that all he must do is let the injured man die and then he can keep the money and use it to turn his life around. Given his weak character, that’s exactly what he does, the first of a series of poor decisions that mire him deeper into trouble.

J. K. Flynn’s debut standalone novel, Bad Copper, is set in a small English town outside of London and is filled with tension from the point where Rupert Jones gives in to temptation and goes from being a lazy copper to a bad copper.

To make things worse than Jones manages on his own, he gets entrusted with an important assignment to safeguard a British MP who has received death threats from a criminal kingpin. Rupert’s original decision to steal the money (which turned out to be drug money) ends up endangering the MP and her son.

Bad Copper moves at a rapid pace, especially after the discovery of the money, and kept me turning the pages even though the end for Rupert Jones seemed quite inevitable the deeper I got into the book. I fully expected Jones would suffer a similar fate to that of Llewelyn Moss (No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy) who also stole a satchel full of drug money. There was a genuine sense of unease throughout the novel because the despicable Jones kept putting more and more innocent people at risk (including his own sons) because of his self-serving actions and ridiculous choices that must inevitably out him as a thief.

What really sets this novel apart from others in the genre is its perspective. Rather than the traditional hero-type police officer, J. K. Flynn gives us a pathetic failure of a man as the protagonist, who we might have loved to hate were Rupert Jones not such a pitiful loser all around. It’s a fascinating and gripping look at cops and crime from the opposite perspective. You get the sense that it’s very much based on reality, albeit exaggerated in some places to entertain the reader.

Bad Copper is a dark and authentic novel that shines a light on what is a rarely explored corner of crime fiction. If you love your fiction dark and gritty, then you are going to love this new novel by J. K. Flynn.

You can buy the book from Amazon, where it is available in digital form and paperback. Also, for now, Bad Copper is available to read free by Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

I purchased the copy of Bad Copper from Amazon used for this review.

My Rating: ★★★★★