Fact and fiction remain uneasy bedfellows in The Masters of Bow Street, John Creasey's massive … family saga about the generations of struggle preceding the creation of the Metropolitan Police Force by Sir Robert Peel. Creasey's normal output was eight to twelve books a year. Having stockpiled novels frantically for three years, he was free to devote the last twelve months of his life entirely to The Masters of Bow Street. It was almost as if subconsciously he knew he was dying, and planned this book as a spectacular farewell.

That, surely, is how it should be judged: as a massive, bravura spectacular, a last-minute bombe surprise to round-off the incredible forty-year, six-hundred book feast which Creasey has given his fans. Here, in full display, are all the elements that made old Creasey Creasey: the driving narrative, the subtly understated heroics, the simple humanity, the strident small-1 liberalism, the...