Ken Bruen's Blitz

reviewed Allan Guthrie

"BRANT considered asking her for a ride but she looked the deep type. She’d have issues and want to talk after. He hated that."

DS Brant is the protagonist of Ken Bruen’s police procedural novels set in South East London. The White Trilogy (A White Arrest, Taming The Alien and The McDead) introduced an unsuspecting world to the crazy cop who pre-dates The Shield’s Vic Mackie in demonstrating a disregard for protocol and a willingness to get the job done in whatever maverick fashion circumstances dictate. Handy with his fists, too. A loner. Dances to his own moral jig. A benign thug.

Well...

"Brant grinned: "I hate everybody"". See, that’s what he claims. And yet in Blitz, when Roberts’s life falls apart, Brant’s the one who looks after him. When Falls loses it, Brant’s on hand again. And Brant’s relationship with Porter Nash has moments of real warmth, despite Nash being a ‘nancy’. In many ways, Brant’s more of a father to Nash than Nash’s own father.

Complex? You betcha.

You see, as Bruen said to Jason Starr in a recent interview in Crime Spree Magazine, the cops in his novels are actually the criminals. Well, yeah. They’re capable of anything from petty thuggery to premeditated homicide—although their motivation is usually moral or (arguably a kind of justice) vengance-related rather than financial. Authority figures in Ken Bruen novels are rarely wholesome (now that’s noir).

Take the über-authority figure, Superintendent Brown.

In fact, he’s the man who hates everybody. He’s one majorly fucked-up individual, the real wanker of the bunch. No humanity in him at all. Rampant prejudice and paranoia pouring out of every pore. He says: "As acting inspector he [Porter Nash] has proved sadly inadequate. These people—queers—they don’t have the staying power."

Not content with ‘blatant homophobia’, he further reveals to the bemused Roberts: "Yer darkies, I never fully trust them; they hate us, you know."

Is he that different from the serial killer, Barry Weiss? Well, yeah. He’s cowardly and a fuck of a lot lazier.

Now Barry doesn’t mess around: "At the arse end of East Lane, he bought a gun from some non-European fuck for fifty quid. A Glock, who hadn’t heard of those babes? Lightweight, reliable, sleek. He loved that piece. To celebrate, he shot a traffic warden in Balham, like anyone gave a toss." Traffic wardens are just for practice. Barry White (oops, weiss is German for white as Ken Bruen undoubtedly knows) graduates to policemen. He’s a nasty piece of work, no saving graces. Can’t even sing. He’s had a run-in with Brant previously. Brant gave him a doing, and Weiss has a long memory.

Back to Brant. Well, to McDonald. PC McDonald fucked off Brant, so Brant sets up McDonald. Then McDonald tries to behave like Brant and ends up in deeper shit than he has any hope of swimming in, cause he ain’t no Brant. "If Brant had done similar acts and was still a hard-ass, then he was a fucking ice man…Brant would have thrown him out the window and had takeaway chips after."

McDonald’s wrong, though. Brant is not unaffected. "By the time he [Brant] got to his flat, he felt his mind begin its shut-down. Inside, he made some tea, tried to focus on what he was to do first. Oh yeah, shower…The TV was directly in front. He stared at the blank screen. The tea went cold, he didn’t move, just continued to stare at the screen." And the next three days are ‘lost’. He has no idea where he’s been or what he’s done. A fugue state that, brilliantly, has no explanation.

Us readers, we’re intelligent. We can work it out for ourselves, right?

Then there's the ingenuity of the following plot thread. Falls, a black WPC, has befriended a 16-year-old white supremacist known by the street name, Metal. The relationship is fraught with tension, but the bond between them is very strong and Bruen’s genius is that you buy into it, effortlessly. Other novels you’d be saying, "Hang on – a white supremacist and a black woman? Who you trying to kid?"

Who’ve I missed? Oh, yeah. Brant’s boss, Chief Inspector Roberts. Well, he gets some seriously bad news and he doesn’t take it too well. He’s helped by a combination of Falls and Brant, but ultimately what sees him through is his return to work.

Yeah, work as therapy.

Cause you have to wonder if work is also Brant’s therapy. He has no home life, just his beloved Ed McBain novels. And he’s definitely in need of therapy. But is work for Brant just an excuse to wield power over others? Is control his medicine?

As if he’d tell us. More likely he'd kick us in the balls, say,
"Medicate that."

Hmmm. Work as denial facilitator, perhaps. Stop working and a fugue state ensues. Am I close?

The Brant novels are all hilarious, but the opening scene of Blitz is hard to beat. It’s right up there with the best of Brookmyre (Quite Ugly One Morning and One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night are two of the funniest opening chapters ever written). Here, in Blitz, Brant’s replaying Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch of Concrete Blonde, where he’s being forced to see a police psychiatrist. Brant, unlike Bosch, doesn’t take too kindly to having his head examined. By the end of the chapter, he’s turned the tables and his psychiatric evaluation is history. Not only that, he’s got McDonald into trouble, the doctor struck off and nicked a nice new pen for himself. All without any apparent effort.

Much like Bruen’s style. It’s concise, direct, quirky, poetic, idiosyncratic and, yes, effortless. Read him. The man’s a genius. Period.

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Copyright © 2004 Allan Guthrie

ALLAN GUTHRIE was born in Orkney, but has lived in Edinburgh for most of his adult life. He is married to Donna. He has published several short stories in various magazines and anthologies. His first novel Two-Way Split was published by PointBlank in June 2004. His second novel, Kiss Her Goodbye, will be published by Hard Case Crime on March 7th, 2005. Allan is the editor/webmaster of Noir Originals and commissioning editor for Pulp Originals and PointBlank.
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