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Originally Posted by mitford13
As a long-time US reader of UK police procedurals, I've seen more references to "The Sweeney" than I can count, but never got to see the show. Looks like now I can read the book, though! 
Free on Amazon:
The Sweeney 2: The Manhattan File by Ian Kennedy Martin
Jack Regan is sent to New York on the trail of an international plot involving millions in missing American military hardware. As usual Jack Regan's talent for extreme action means confrontation with the NYPD, the FBI, the CIA and organised crime, and also a mysterious and willing woman.
This is the second of three Sweeney novels published at the time of the original series. The others are: ‘The Sweeney: Regan’, and ‘The Sweeney 3: The Deal of the Century’.
Ian Kennedy Martin is the creator of Thames Television’s enormously popular TV series. |
More info about this from Wikipedia:
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The series was created by writer Ian Kennedy Martin, brother of the better-known Troy Kennedy Martin who contributed several episodes and wrote the second film. It was born from a one-off drama, entitled Regan, which Ian Kennedy Martin wrote for Thames Television's Armchair Cinema series of standalone films in 1974. The part of Regan was specifically written for Thaw, by a friend of Kennedy Martin with whom he had worked on Redcap.
From the very beginning, the show was seen as having series potential. After Regan scored highly in the ratings, work began on the development of the series proper. Ian Kennedy Martin's ideas for the series were for it to be partially studio-based, with more dialogue and less action but producer Ted Childs disagreed with this, and Ian Kennedy Martin reluctantly parted company with the project.
The Sweeney was the first really modern police-based series on British television. Previously, most dramas featuring the police had shied away from showing "coppers" as fallible human beings... They were brutal and violent in dealing with London's hardened criminals, and prone to cutting corners and bending laws. The series showed a somewhat more realistic side of the police, which often had a disregard for authority, rules and the "system", as long it got the job done. Until The Sweeney, this had been a subject largely whitewashed by British television.
It was a fast-paced edge-of-your-seat action series, depicting the Squad's relentless battle against armed robbery; but it nevertheless included a substantial degree of humour. For the time, it had a high degree of graphic on-screen violence and the episodes had a high number of on-screen deaths.
A total of nine books were written and released in 1977 published by Futura Publications Ltd.
The Sweeney
Regan and the Manhattan File
Regan and the Deal of the Century
Regan and the Lebanese Shipment
Regan and the Human Pipeline
Regan and the Bent Stripper
Regan and the Snout Who Cried Wolf
Regan and the Venetian Virgin
Regan and the High Rollers
The first three books were authored by Ian Kennedy Martin, the rest by Joe Balham. The plots of the books are not taken from any of the television episodes; overall, the tone of the books differ somewhat from the television series in that Regan is usually depicted as working alone, and his relationship with Carter is distinctly unfriendly
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The Sweeney
He has this to say about the books at his website:
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Owning the book rights of the series I created, the Sweeney, there was an agreement with the tv company that I would not alter the format of the series in writing the three novels. Another writer under a pseudonym wrote a further four. So I penned those novels under certain constraints but despite this they had a stand alone existence published in the USA and other places where the tv programme was not sold.
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http://www.iankennedymartin.com/page2.htm