The Hackman Blues (Bloodlines) - Softcover

Ken Bruen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1899344225 ISBN 13: 9781899344222

Publisher: Do Not Pr, 1998

Synopsis

Fans of Bruen...will enjoy seeing the Keystone Crooks get picked off one by one."" - Kirkus Reviews. Brady, our narrator, is fifty, gay, and a manic-depressive professional criminal of Irish descent, strung out on lithium and excessive drinking. Today he has neglected to take his medication, which makes him even more manic, violent, and unpredictable. Brady is hired to find a powerful Irish construction chief's daughter. Known as the ""Hackman,"" the chief believes his daughter is in Brixton, a multi-racial part of London that is predominantly black. Brady recruits his former cell-mate, a black thug, and another ""associate"" to get the girl back. This doesn't please the construction chief, who's an out-and-out racist. The whole thing goes horribly wrong when Brady tries to play her black gangster boyfriend against the ""Hackman"" and his Irish heavies in a complicated ransom ploy. The Hackman Blues is ""a masterpiece of London noir"" (BBC Greater London Radio).

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Tony Brady, whose search for a Labour MP's Yorkshire terrier has earned him the title of ``Ace Ventura of Vauxhall,'' is a gay, balding manic-depressive (or at least cyclothymic) who's stopped taking his lithium. Naturally, racist, homophobic, well-connected Irish builder Jack Dunphy, who looks just like Gene Hackman, is convinced that Brady's the perfect man to locate his missing Cambridge-educated daughter Roz. And he's right, because only a few days after he takes Jack's money, Brady and his prison mate, Elias Rasheed Mohammed, find Roz slinking around the Ballistic, a black Brixton club that's home base to a bloke named Leon, who must have something that's keeping Roz happy. Bring her back anyway, says Jack, shoving a fat wad of notes at the master sleuths. Nothing could be simpler than following the client's orders, so Brady and Reed decide to grab Roz from Leon but keep her themselves, extracting payoffs from both the solicitous father and the outraged lover. Even in the hands of someone not so obsessed with blues, toy boys, and Gene Hackman, this would be a less-than-brilliant idea, but fans of Bruen's blistering noir valentine, Rilke on Black (1997), will enjoy seeing the Keystone Crooks get picked off one by one. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal:

The job is to find the girl. Given that Roz is white, upper crust, and reported to be in Brixton, a predominantly black section of London, it seems simple enough. But just as in Raymond Chandler's Farewell My Lovely, things go wrong quickly. The girl's father is Jack Dunphy, a big shot in the building trades with a fancied resemblance to the actor Gene Hackman (hence the title). And Roz is being kept by Leon, a debonair but ruthless black club-owner in Brixton. The detective on the case is Tony Brady, who will be the first to tell you that he is gay, manic-depressive, and on the wrong side of 50. During this case he is stuck in manic mode, with the emphasis distinctly on nonstop action. When Brady decides to earn his fortune by playing Dunphy off against Leon, the bullets fly fast, and, for those seeking a dollop of pop culture, so do the allusionsAeverything from Anne Sexton and Armistead Maupin to the Three Stooges. Some of the references (e.g., the Big Issue, a magazine hawked by U.K. homeless) may be unfamiliar here, but readers of hard-boiled British mysteries such as those by Quintin Jardine and Ian Rankin should enjoy this gritty page-turner.ABob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Do Not Pr
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1899344225
• ISBN 13: 9781899344222
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 156