He Kills Coppers (Harvest Book) - Softcover

Arnott, Jake

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156026937 ISBN 13: 9780156026932

Publisher: Mariner Books, 2002

Synopsis

August 1966--the long hot summer of World Cup victory euphoria is abruptly shattered when three policemen are gunned down in a West London street. The bewilderingly senseless crime shocks a nation seemingly at ease with itself, and brings an end to the celebrations. It also marks a beginning for three men who have never met--and yet their fates are bound up with the event and its lasting consequences. Frank Taylor: an ambitious detective conflicted by career and conscience as he is drawn into the vice of corruption. Tony Meehan: a gutter-press journalist with a nose for nasty stories, scandals, and exposés as a cover for his own dark secrets. Billy Porter: a disaffected petty thief, haunted by a violent past, pushed over the edge to commit the ultimate crime.
Like Mario Puzo and James Ellroy before him, Jake Arnott finds in the private realities of marginalized, desperate people a longing for redemption that transforms their discontent into the forces and truths that propel all our lives.

About this title

About the Author:

Jake Arnott is the author of The Long Firm, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, which was acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic and is being adapted as a five-part BBC series. He lives in north London.

From Publishers Weekly:

Imagine a British version of James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential minus much of its imagination and blazing energy and you'll have some idea of this disappointing follow-up to Arnott's highly regarded 2001 debut thriller, The Long Firm (soon to be a BBC miniseries). Like Ellroy, Arnott chooses to tell his period story through multiple voices in this case, three young men whose lives and fates intertwine over the course of many years: Billy Porter, a soldier who becomes a criminal and winds up killing three police officers in 1966; Frank Taylor, an ambitious copper whose best friend and former partner was one of the victims; and Tony Meehan, a gay journalist with a psychotic streak. Using a real case (the killer's name was Harry Roberts, and British football hooligans and later Vietnam protestors used to sing, to the tune of "London Bridge Is Falling Down," "Harry Roberts is our friend,/ is our friend,/ is our friend./ Harry Roberts is our friend,/ He Kills Coppers!") and newsreel-like flashes from such actual events as the World Cup Final game between England and Germany and police raids on Soho vice dens, Arnott tries to paint a picture of a country crippled by moral decay, and usually succeeds in that department. Fans of the first book will recognize a few of the characters who make appearances here; the trouble is that none of the three protagonists is very interesting or original, and the words Arnott uses to bring their thoughts and feelings to life (Tony's "As I fought with my own personal Enemy Within I could content myself with voyeuristic pleasures in the slow surcease of my desperate longings" is fairly typical) fizzle rather than sizzle.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0156026937
• ISBN 13: 9780156026932
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336