Michael Caine is a peerless actor, but how's his first novel?

PERHAPS he was inspired by Alan Garner who, at 88, last year became the oldest ever person to be nominated for the Booker Prize. Maybe as "a life-long reader of thrillers" he thought, as most life-long readers of thrillers do at some point, that thrillers quite often seem formulaic and thus not that hard to knock out.

- Hamish MacBain

More likely, I think, having read Deadly Game, is that its author was thinking back to all the not-that-great maverick cop scripts he undoubtedly used to get sent by the truckload in his younger years and getting a little bit misty-eyed. Because rather than writing what he knows, Michael Caine is, in a debut work of fiction that arrives in his 90th year on Planet Earth, here very much writing what he is known for.

So our hero is the 45-year-old DCI Harry Taylor or, to use the no-doubt-correct pronunciation, "Arry Fackin' Tay-La". Born and raised in New Cross, Harry is old school.

Know what I mean? Tough but with a good heart. Once headbutted a suspect into unconsciousness. Naturally, Harry is "decked out in pressed Levis 501s, a button-down Lauren shirt and a vintage leather jacket that he had owned since his service days." He of course "hates any mention of 'wellness' as much as he loathes criminals" but also can't abide because, I guess, it's the 2020s-"racist or sexist talk in the canteen". Inevitably he can't keep a girlfriend because he's "married to the job". He is not a huge fan of paperwork. Or the pen-pushing, career-minded desk monkey bosses upstairs.