London Boulevard

It is a long way from the sun-baked streets of Los Angeles to the damp and foggy streets of London. But in this American reprint of Ken Bruen's 2001 work, the author successfully bridges the gap by reworking the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard, Billy Wilder's classic noir tale of desperation and death. For the book to live up to the Billy Wilder film noir is a very tall order indeed, but Bruen, the prolific writer from Galway, Ireland, has earned his place at the top of the list of a new generation of writers, including Megan Abbott, Jason Starr and Charles Ardai, all of whom have revitalized noir fiction and dragged it --- often bleeding --- into the new century. And that has meant great reading for the rest of us. Whether set in Ireland in the Jack Taylor series or in London with the Inspector Brant series, Bruen often pays homage in his books to the American masters of the genre, such as Charles Willeford, Ed McBain and Lawrence Block. So it is no surprise that he follows closely the Wilder tale in LONDON BOULEVARD --- even down to the creepy butler. But instead of a chimp being buried in the backyard, it will be far worse. Mitchell gets out of jail after serving three years for a violent assault he has no memory of, although it is not hard to see how he might have done the crime. On the ride home from prison, he gets out of the car and busts the arm of a squeegee man. But he has a job waiting and is given a great apartment thanks to his best friend. For this, he is expected to do muscle work for a loan shark. Then there is his old crew of bank robbers who want to bring him back for one more job. Bruen puts us right from the start in the world of noir: "I had dark eyes, and not just on the outside," Mitchell says early on. But he wants nothing to do with his former life of crime and, on a recommendation, visits the mansion of a once famous London theater star in need of a handyman. He takes the legit job and soon is involved with the old actress. What follows are double and triple crosses that keep the pages quickly turning. And Bruen's take on the ending is --- if such a thing is possible --- even darker than Sunset Boulevard. As in the movie, Mitchell meets a girl he immediately falls in love with and wants to protect her from his dark world. Bruen writes, "She was attractive no doubt, but I (Mitchell) hesitated. She said, `There is a lovely word in Irish, it's bronach...means sadness but a lot more. Anyway, that is how you looked.'" And Mitchell is in a world of sadness. It's interesting that the character of the writer in Wilder's classic should be transformed into a small-time criminal in Bruen's update. But I don't think Bruen is trying to insult those of us who try to scribble for a living, nor is he making a larger, perhaps well-deserved point about the publishing business. He is quite right and unique, however, in linking noir to the Irish concept of sadness. Noir might have been born in sunny America, but its roots are as deep as al

Minutes before Mitchell is to be freed after spending three years in prison for an assault he did not remember committing due to a drunken haze, the warden tells the fortyish convict he will be back. Mitchell hides the terminator retort and steps outside knowing he looks like a shifty felon. Working for loan shark Tommy Logan, Billy Norton arrives to pick him up, but Mitchell wonders if this acquaintance can be considered a friend though he is there to take him home. Logan has plans for Mitchell, but the ex con does not have a compulsive need for quick money and is obsessed with not being a recidivism statistic. Mitchell obtains a handyman position at the Holland Park estate of aging movie actress, Lillian Palmer. As he struggles with adjusting to her odd butler Jordan, those close to him begin to die from an unknown adversary who soon threatens his beloved but insane sister Briony and others like Aisling and even a dog. Mitchell's obsession about staying out of jail has turned compulsive but no one hurts Briony. With plenty of dark humor throughout, Ken Bruen pays violent homage to Sunset Boulevard with this fast-paced Noir. Each of the key cast members contains differing personalities, but the story line belongs to the anti-hero who just wants to go straight yet finds himself swimming in a foggy sea of sordid sleaze as those good citizens are as nasty as the those he met behind bars and rival those muscles working for Logan. With more blood spilled than a downtown Emergency Room like Atlanta's Grady, fans who don't mind hearing the breaking of bones will want to read Mr. Bruen's gloomy view of London. Harriet Klausner

"Mitchell" is a hard guy. He is just out of prison after three years of payback for a brutal beating he doesn't remember. But best mate Billy Norton is waiting at the gate with a sweet setup for Mitch as the muscle for a loan shark. Though Mitchell's feeling are mixed. While the perqs that come with the leg breaking are good, he'd just as soon skip another stay at the gray bar hotel. When a job as a live-in handy man for aging actress Lillian Palmer falls into his lap, Mitchell takes a shot - if a somewhat tentative shot for the career criminal - at the straight and narrow. From this backdrop, the prolific Ken Bruen literally rips out another savage crime novel with more grit than Jones Beach and Bruen's trademark black humor. Lillian Palmer, deliciously demented and coming complete with a sexual appetite that belies her years, provides a bizarre twist to what otherwise may have been a pedestrian and often-told story of betrayal and retribution. But the real brilliance in the author's twisted logic comes in the form of "Jordan", Palmer's mysterious butler who proves to be so much more. Bruen's staccato dialogue and disregard for small annoyances like punctuation or other literary convention add to the quirky appeal of Mitchell and the eclectic cast of thugs and wankers that follow him through the pages of this razor-edged page turner, which should keep you guessing right up to the bloody last sentence. Adding to Mitch's (and Bruen's) sandpaper charm is an uncongruous and unabashed love of crime fiction and the authors that pen them, with references to Andrew Vachss, Dennis LeHane, and other masters of crime who are liberally quoted and add credibility and depth to an already addictive storyline. If you haven't read Bruen yet - an unforgivable injustice that he remains relatively unknown, at least on this side of the Atlantic - then "London Boulevard" is a great place to start what you can expect to be a long, entertaining, and brutal acquaintance.

For mystery readers, Ken Bruen is the best kept secret around. For a while it was George Pelecanos but I believe that now the title of "superb, excellent but underappreciated" has been passed to the former Galway English teacher.I read Bruen's "The Guards" last year and then followed that up with "The White Trilogy," both literary journeys well below the surface of the pool where the bottom feeders live and ply their trade.Mitchell serves three years for aggravated assault in a London prison. One imagines almost a sullen Steve McQueen-like character, Mitchell never had a recollection of how the crime actually happened since he's a black out binge drinker. We are left to imagine that it was the circumstantial testimony of the victim and Mitchell's good mate, Billy Norton, that get him the sentence.He gets out and tries to go straight but there's an entire cadre of people who keep setting up roadblocks for him. Billy meets him after his release and wants him to go into the loan shark collection business with him. Briony, his lovely sister, keeps telling him that she and her husband Frank will meet him for dinner, but Frank's been dead for 5 years. And Lillian, the aging actress who hires him to be a handyman on her enormous estate, wants him to be full service handyman. All this while he finds true love in Aisling, who loves him and wants to marry him, and in all of this confusion . . . he does too.Ken Bruen is like James Crumley, high praise for both. There are no sensitive remarks between buddies and it's sure not written for the movies. It's a stark, tough life. Not everybody makes it and those that do are never the same. The publishing is of poor quality, with occasional improper spacing, incorrect punctuation, missing periods, reverse quotation marks. But the quality of the work is extremely good. 5 stars. Easily 7 or 8. Larry Scantlebury

In this fast-paced variation on "Sunset Boulevard" set in London, the protagonists are a small-time thug, an over-the-hill actress, and various violent characters whom the thug manages to enrage. All are enjoyable, though none is likable. The action and dialog are fast and furious and extremely clever, with the whole thing taking about three hours to read. Fans of Elmore Leonard and James Ellrod should cotton to Ken Bruen.