We Don't Call Them Raids (The Nostrils Series Book 5)

Well I've read the entire series and this last one really just wasn't as good as the others. Far too much of the prison time stuff and not really in keeping with the other books but overall the series is brilliant so start at 'green to blue' and take it from there.

This is the fifth and so far final book in Jonathan Cox' s fictional crime series.I enjoyed the book but as a former officer myself, I found too many holes in the plot.Now set in 2003, we find our central character Chris Pritchard, still a Detective Sergeant but now having moved on from his previous role he is working in a local murder squad with a new team of characters.Without spoiling the story, the second chapter finds Chris in a compromising situation trying to purchase drugs to feed his reoccurring habit that started at the end of the third story. The fact he talks his way out of it without any repercussions leaves a lot to the imagination, but this book has to be viewed with a fictitious view to entertain the reader. The central character has also been conducting a double life since the previous story which again is a bit far fetched.Jonathan Cox also implies that drink driving of serving officers was still accepted or ignored to some degree - having been in the job myself in 2003, I can state cops were sacked and dealt with robustly like they are now, so again I found this aspect of the story to be incorrect.Overall, if you ignore the flaws in comparing this story with real life then it is a really good book. Much like the Peter James books - the boundaries of crime writing fiction are pushed further than they were at the beginning of the series as Jonathan keeps the series running at a steady pace.Jonathan Cox maintains a quite gripping story which sees Nostrils go from one escapade to another, to stay the right side of the thin blue line. The story begins to unravel towards the end to reach a satisfying conclusion.I do hope after almost three years, Jonathan Cox will return with another book in due course. The epilogue in book 4 seems to suggest Nostrils might yet return as a 50-odd-year-old private eye.

I started off loving this series, but my enthusiasm is starting to wane. The number of grammatical and spelling errors is really starting to grate and I am strating to become rather disillusioned with the main character, Chris Pritchard, aka Nostrils. None of us are perfect but there is a bitterness and a very questionable moral standard about his persona that have edged their way in over the last couple of books and that has certainly made the story's protagonist lose much of his warmth. And don't assume that I mean that the first book(s) had cover to cover fluffiness, it was absolutely the opposite. Perhaps it's a reflection of reality, the job and all its challenges in multi cultural London and just a case of the innocence of youth being eroded by the grim reality of life as a London copper. I shall carry on reading, but with perhaps slightly less gusto than when I ploughed through books 1 & 2, barely putting them down until I'd read them to the end.

The "Nostrils" series is a great, compulsive read. I'm sad I have only two more books to read! The physical books, as objects, are quite odd: no title pages, no publishing history, sometimes no page numbers. There are masses of typos, sentences with words missing, little or no sub-editing ... but the narrative just sweeps you along so the errors hardly seem to matter. I'm really enjoying these stories.

I really enjoyed this fifth book by Jonathan Cox. It made me laugh out loud in some parts and others – well they just had to be based on truth because as they say fact is stranger than fiction.The book has a really good story line too and I just wanted to keep on reading – it was superb.As a former serving police officer, I imagine Jonathan has amalgamated experiences of friends, colleagues and officers and rolled them into poor DC Chris Pritchard. A kind of ‘taking one for the team’ of how life in the Met really was including, long hours, tough but rewarding times, a lot of time spent in the boozer and a wrecked marriage or two.Having followed the career of DC Chris Pritchard in the other four books in this series, I kind of feel I know him. His personal life is a complete shambles – but that somehow makes him more loveable.

Each volume of this series gets better and better. The twists and turns make this book utterly riveting. Jonathan Cox is a story teller par excellence. He is equal to such greats as Alastair MacLean and Hammond Innes.I foresee the film rights for this series being fought for. This could easily be the new “Line of Duty”.

This is the 5th book in the series all have been good reads interesting funny and they seem true to lifeI grew up in North London so some of the places are familiar to me

I’ve read all the previous books in the series and loved them. I liked this, but it was different from the others; a bit more serious.Not as many, if any, laugh out loud or sad moments. This one is more a serious ‘whodunnit’, and is certainly up their with the best. How Chris Pritchard gets himself into these messes is incredible, but this leaves you wondering how, and if, he’ll get out.