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Many American readers are familiar with Ken Bruen from his four acclaimed hard-boiled mysteries featuring Jack Taylor, a drug and booze addicted Galway private eye. If you only know Bruen's work from the Taylor series, you're in for a treat. For Bruen is also the author of a police procedural series set in southeast London, featuring the amoral Sergeant Brant.
CALIBRE is the sixth entry in the series that began in 1998. This is one of those books that once you read it, you immediately will have to search out and buy all the other books featuring Brant and his fellow constables. It's so enjoyable and fast-paced that if you're like me, you'll want to catch up with everything you missed.
Bruen, who lives in Galway, Ireland, is a brilliant, creative, original voice. He is a writer clearly seeped in the American hard-boiled and noir tradition; he had been called a "Celtic Dashiell Hammett." And indeed, if you are Irish, you instinctively know about the dark side of life even before you learn to read. History resonates. But part of being Irish is to leaven the bad stuff with a caustic, fatalistic, often-hilarious sense of humor. And that is evident in Bruen's work.
The constables in CALIBRE work in a section of London where the kids view the police in an atmosphere of "hostility on speed" and cops carry around "simmering rage." This social tension is bound to produce trouble. Enter the "manners psycho."
In a letter taunting the cops, he makes clear his goals: "Anyone, and I mean anyone, who behaves like an a------ in public shall be terminated." This mission, he writes in his journal, is "my reality TV."
Now here is a serial killer for modern times. This is a serial killer who would require weapons of mass destruction and a large appointment book. His first victim viciously berates his girlfriend in a café, reducing her to tears. He meets his grim fate when he is pushed in front of a Brit Rail train. Victim number two is a harried female executive who curses out a cab driver. The killer simply follows her into her office building and tosses her out the window.
The constables of the Southeast London "Met" who get the case have issues of their own. Brant, we learn, "was heavily built with a black Irish face that wasn't so much lived in as squatted upon." Inspector Roberts is trying to keep alive his perfect record of solving cases while finding the funds to buy clothes he thinks are stylish but aren't. Female Constable Falls is trying to resurrect her career after a disastrous earlier case lands her literally in the basement. Porter Nash has to deal with being both diabetic and gay. PC McDonald is badly burned out, terrified after being shot on the job.
Throughout this book, Bruen pays homage to the American masters of noir, which Brant likes to call "Nora." At one point, the serial killer, a crooked accountant by trade, tells us, "America appreciates a decent killer." It is probably something that won't make the travel brochures, but both our killer and Brant read and love American mysteries.
The killer is a big fan of Jim Thompson and takes his pen name, Ford, after the protagonist of THE KILLER INSIDE ME. He also dreams, lucky for us, of coming to America, where he will "Get me a pick-up, rifle on the rack, dog on the front seat, a coonhound of course, Hank Williams on the speakers."
Sergeant Brant owns the entire Ed McBain 87th Precinct series and is inspired, sort of, to write a book after McBain's character, Fat Ollie Weeks, does the same in FAT OLLIE'S BOOK. Brant could be Fat Ollie's English cousin, only far worse.
Bruen clearly models this series after the 87th Precinct novels. He establishes the individual story lines of the cops and weaves them seamlessly throughout the book. But the comparison ends there, and Bruen provides his Irish, ironic twist. McBain wrote his series to honor the hard-working, high-integrity cops; Bruen turns that notion on its head.
Bruen's series is kind of the 87th Precinct drunk on power and twisted by drugs and personal demons. In other words, the anti-87th Precinct.
Take Brant, for example, who has more in common with Thompson killer cop Sheriff Ford than McBain's hero cop, Carella. Brant steals dope from drug dealers, has sex with hookers who are also witnesses, lies, manipulates people at will, drugs other cops, breaks into homes and seems to be not above murdering bad guys without a trial.
What a delightful bad good guy or good bad guy. He is described by others in the book as "attractive in a mad dog fashion" and a "brute force." His prospective literary agent, who he has just bedded in yet another ethical lapse, calls him "you animal." "His history was littered with darkness, and the way he survived that was to keep it locked up tight," Bruen writes.
But through it all, there is plenty of dark humor and a hell of a lot of fun, as readers can't wait to see what Brant will do next. He is, after all, an excellent detective.
Bruen is a terrific writer and he might have created the police procedural for the early 21st century. Remember that McBain started his series in the more innocent and optimistic 1950s. Bruen paints a picture of an existential world where sometimes really bad guys will do things for good reasons and basically good guys do really bad things. But hope never dies. The book ends with the words of poor Porter Nash:
"Worse, somewhere in his mind was the mad notion that the cops were still the good guys, but this proved they were seriously deranged…Mainly, he was saddened. Sighing, he figured that he'd do what he did best, continue to fight the bedraggled fight."
If you read CALIBRE, you are going to do exactly what I did: go right online and order another Brant story. Ken Bruen writes fast; this is his 17th book. That is very good news for mystery fans, who can look forward to many more years of Sergeant Brant and Jack Taylor.
--- Reviewed by Tom Callahan
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