PotsandPlots

I’ve read a lot of great things about the fantasy novels of author R J Barker, but have yet to pick one up. He’s on the wishlist, but you know how it is. So many books, so little time. It didn’t help that for quite a long time, I muddled him up with an author with a similar name, whose book I couldn’t finish.

Barker has recently added a new string to his bow. R. J. Dark is a nom de plume for this novel, featuring crime-fighting duo Mal and Jackie. I say “crime-fighting,” but they’re not above a little crime-perpetrating themselves.

Mal and Jackie’s first outing, A Numbers Game, fizzes off the page. Its snappy dialogue and compelling mystery make it a must-read.

Growing Information:

Plant With: Crime Fiction, Sink Estates, Feel Good Noir.

Grows Into: A compelling crime caper that examines how our backgrounds shape us.

Rating: Hardy Perennial 🌻🌻🌻(Check here for rating information.)

Available from the 18th August in paperback (affiliate link).

The Review:

Mal Jones is a recovering addict with a criminal record. He runs a semi-con operation as a psychic, living and working on the edge of the notorious Blades Edge estate.

Mal has a new client forced upon him by the irrepressible Jackie, a Sikh criminal with a questionable reputation. Over the course of the novel, Jackie appears to be coated in Teflon.

Janine Stanbeck married into the Stanbeck crime family, scourge of Blades Edge. Her husband has died in mysterious circumstances in a motorway accident. Janine comes to Mal looking, not for a comforting conversation with her husband in the afterlife, but to discover the whereabouts of his winning lottery ticket. It’s a ticket that will get her and her son out of Blades Edge and free them from the violent Stanbecks.

Mal, for obvious reasons, cannot actually commune with the departed, but he is a great reader of people. He feels compelled to help, which sets him on a journey that will pit him against the Stanbecks, the Russian mafia, and the dogged attentions of Yorkshire Police.

I’m not going to dwell too much on the mystery aspect of the novel, except to say that it is a first-class puzzle. A Numbers Game provides an intricate mystery, with a satisfying solution.

What sets the novel apart from the field are its characters and sense of place. The Blades Estate and its denizens feel like real people. Their speech, their actions, interactions and motivations feel believable throughout the novel. The depiction of the Blades Estate as a place forgotten but trying its best feels palpably on point for 2026 Britain.

A Numbers Game could easily have slipped into being a politically charged novel, but Dark has chosen not to do so. The choice to portray Jackie as a gay immigrant, describing the attention and attitudes this brings him, does lend the novel a progressive tone, but no cheap shots are fired here.

Dark does not deliver a biting critique of Faragiste politics but he does highlight the slide into despair such communities face, providing context for why the idea of “breaking the system that doesn’t work for me” is such a powerful vote-puller.

A Perfect Double Act

The highlight of A Numbers Game is the relationship between Mal and Jackie. One that goes back to their school days. Jackie, I found particularly compelling. He’s a charismatic charmer, a borderline psychopath, but with a streak of humanity that makes him impossible not to root for. His insouciant swagger is hard not to love.

Mal, a reformed addict, feels like a cat with an indefinite number of lives. No matter how many times he tries to do the right thing, stay above the muck generated by the Stanbecks and the Blades, he always gets dragged back in, right up to his knees.

While on the surface, A Numbers Game might feel light, almost comedic, it highlights many of the inequalities found in Britain. It does so in a compassionate fashion, revealing the humanity behind the stereotypes and cyphers shown in the press and across social media.

I found A Numbers Game excellent in almost every regard. It delivers a satisfying mystery without ever seeming too far-fetched. It’s gritty but has a lightness of touch that belies some of the violence that occurs between its pages. It made me queasy at times, but also made me laugh.

I assume that “Jackie and Mal” has been conceived with a series in mind. I certainly hope so. I like that they have the camaradarie of amateur sleuths in a setting more associated with hard bitten, hard drinking police investigators. I do hope we will see their further exploits soon and, I guess, I need to bump RJ Barker further up the “to buy” list.