Michael Gilbert, the Grandmaster of literate crime fiction, exhibits all his considerable skills in this, his latest spellbinder. Roller-Coaster finds police detective Patrick Petrella installed behind a desk as superintendent of the East London docklands. Though this appointment makes a well deserved career advance, the paperwork, the race relations, allegations of police brutality, press harassment, and the legacy of corrupt cops make Petrella itch to be on the streets again himself. There is also the matter of the nasty taste left by the manner of his predecessor's departure. In a novel which moves briskly between back-alleys and boardrooms, Petrella uncovers an especially despicable smuggling ring which stretches across the North Sea to the sleazier side of Amsterdam. Soon he finds himself standing against the most unscrupulous criminal outfit in London, and, matador-like, waiting for the enraged bull to charge. Roller-Coaster is an indictment of the pressures of modern police work wrapped up in the smoothest of action-packed storytelling.