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White Lines
Ken Bruen’s First Three "Brant" Novels as Addictive, Life-Altering Substances
by Duane Swierczynski
One of my favorite Saturday Night
Live parodies features a fictitious beer called "Coldcock." It’s a
malt liquor so powerful, a fist actually rises up out of the can and punches you
in the face. Fwww-whap! "Coldcock’s the one you never see comin’."
Ken Bruen’s White Trilogy is the Coldcock of crime fiction. Never saw
it comin’.
I picked up my copy more or less at random in the mystery aisle at the Rittenhouse Square Barnes & Noble in downtown Philly. It was a thick trade paperback with a cover photo of a gritty cityscape complete with double-decker bus. To Americans, this equals London. So this was London noir. Cool. Then the byline: "Three novels by Ken Bruen." Three for the price of one? I’m a big fan of bargains. Another plus.
And now that I thought about it, the name "Ken Bruen" rang a faint bell. I remembered eyeballing a Bruen novel called Rilke On Black a few years back. The cover featured a man’s bare, muscular chest, along with more than a hint of nipple. So I thought, "Oh. Must be gay crime fiction." Then I thought about the title. Got it now: gay criminal with a black boyfriend. And I gently slid the book back on the shelf. I mean, not that I wouldn’t read a gay crime novel. Just wasn’t in the mood. At least, not that day. I was sure I’d get around to it…
I’m an idiot. I could have
hopped on the Bruen Bandwagon back in ’98.
Instead, it was the three novels that make up the White Trilogy—A White
Arrest, Taming the Alien, and The McDead—that served as my first
trip to Bruenville. This was unlike any crime fiction I’d read before. The
series follows the exploits of Chief Inspector Roberts and Detective Sergeant
Brant, two cops working Southeast London. By turns shocking, violent, hilarious,
compassionate, smart, wise-cracking… it had the same effect on me that I
imagine Hammett’s first Continental Op stories had on the Philo Vance crowd.
This was raw, close-to-the-bone writing, as personal as a punch in the face.
Coldcock! Fwww-whap!
After reading the White Trilogy over three wintry days—that’s the deal with Ken Bruen novels; you burn through them quickly, leading to a panicked need to ration pages toward the end—I had one of those "road to Damascus" moments. I realized that crime novels didn’t have to fit into neat little genre boxes. The Brant and Roberts novels are so wild and fun because the normal rules don’t apply. Anything can happen. Good people can be crushed... or killed. Evil can triumph—or earn commendations.
Before reading my first Brant, I had already written a few chapters of a heist novel that felt stilted. This became really obvious after reading The White Trilogy; side by side, my fiction looked like bottom-rung rail scotch as compared to the Johnny Walker Blue of Ken’s prose. But it wasn’t just the language. It was the sense that his characters’ destinies weren’t mapped out using a plot wheel or outline; they lived and bled. Ken wasn’t just another mystery writer; he was a gonzo journalist covering the broken lives in his imagination. So I made a promise to myself to follow the story, and not try to force it somewhere. I let the characters run the show.
About a year later, I finished the
heist novel—Smell the Roses—and just a few months ago sold it to St.
Martin’s Press. I can tell you without any false modesty that my original plot
for the novel… well, sucked. Only when I released control of the characters’
lives did the novel start to roll.
The White Trilogy taught me how to do that.
What’s the old line—everyone who heard Velvet Underground’s first album went out and started a rock band? In time, I think we’ll see that the first three novels of The White Trilogy served as similar kind of wake-up call.
Of course, that’s where the analogy stalls. With the Brant novels, Ken was only getting warmed up. Because next, he turned his gonzo brain to Galway with the Jack Taylors…
But that’s another story,
another addiction entirely.
Copyright© 200
4 Duane Swierczynski***
DUANE
SWIERCZYNSKI is the author of six non-fiction
books about vice and crime, including THIS HERE’S A STICK-UP: THE BIG BAD BOOK
OF AMERICAN BANK ROBBERY (Alpha, 2002) and THE PERFECT DRINK FOR EVERY OCCASION
(Quirk, 2003). He’s worked as an editor at Men’s Health, Details
and Philadelphia magazines, and is now editor in chief of the Philadelphia
City Paper. Swierczynski is such a crime fiction junkie, he named his first-born
son “Parker” in honor of the Richard Stark character. Duane's
first crime novel SECRET DEAD MEN will be published later this year by
PointBlank Press. Next year sees the publication of his second novel, SMELL
THE ROSES, from St Martin's Press. He welcomes all
comments; his literary agent is David Hale
Smith.
Contact Duane