Bücher von Ken Bruen

"The White Trilogy" Teil IIIDie R&B der Londoner Metropolitan Police sind zurück: Chief Inspector Roberts undDetective Sergeant Brant. Wie üblich geht in ihrem Revier im Südosten Londons eineMenge Scheiße vor sich. Ein Mann wurde, zu Tode geschlagen, in einem heruntergekommenenZimmer in Stockwell aufgefunden. Daran ist nichts Ungewöhnliches, außerdass das Opfer Tony, der Bruder von Chief Inspector Roberts, ist. Sie haben seit einemJahrzehnt nicht mehr miteinander gesprochen, aber er ist immer noch Familie. Familie undRache sind etwas, mit dem sich Roberts identifizieren kann. Und der Bruder des Opfers isteiner der gemeinsten Polizisten in London. Chief Inspector Roberts ist der letzte Mann, derTony lebend gesehen hat und er verspricht, seinen Bruder zu rächen.Auf der anderen Seite des Reviers ist Detective Sergeant Brant dem gnadenlosen irischenGangster Tommy Logan auf der Spur, einem rücksichtslosen Abschaum ohne Respekt vorder Polizei oder irgendjemandem. Als Tommy aus dem Gefängnis entlassen wurde,beschloss er, Ire zu werden. Er änderte seinen Nachnamen in Logan, zog in den SüdostenLondons und fing an, einen Hurley mit sich herumzuschleppen. Logan zeichnete sichschnell als einer der klügsten der South Side aus: ein Meister der Geldwäsche, der Tarnfirmenund des Ausweichens vor der Polizei. Seine einzige Schwäche ist sein Temperament- und das wird sein Imperium zum Einsturz bringen.Logan wird bald herausfinden, dass kein Hurley hart genug ist, um das Wort eines entschlossenenPolizisten zu brechen.Und nicht zu vergessen: WPC Falls - "schwarz und hübsch" - wird als Lockvogel für den"Clapham Rapist" eingesetzt, ein Serientäter mit einer Vorliebe für afrokaribische Frauen.

America-the land of opportunity, a place where economic prosperity beckons: but not for PI Jack Taylor, who's just been refused entry. Disappointed and bitter, he thinks that an encounter with an overly friendly stranger in an airport bar is the least of his problems. Except that this stranger seems to know much more than he should about Jack. Jack thinks no more of their meeting and resumes his old life in Galway. But when he's called to investigate a student murder-connected to an elusive Mr. K-he remembers the man from the airport. Is the stranger really who he says he is? With the help of the Jameson, Jack struggles to make sense of it all. After several more murders and too many coincidental encounters, Jack believes he may have met his nemesis. But why has he been chosen? And could he really have taken on the devil himself? Suspenseful, haunting, and totally unique, The Devil is Bruen at his very best.

"Aliens Bändigung" ist das zweite Buch der "White"- Trilogie, das ebenso von einer niederträchtigen Gruppe von Lowlifes, Wideboys und altmodischen Bösewichten aus dem Südosten Londons handelt, wie wir sie schon bei "Saubermann" angetroffen haben. Detective Sergeant Brant und sein Boss, Inspector Roberts, sind als "R&B" der Metropolitan Policebekannt - und sie sind so schäbig und skrupellos wie die Schurken, die sie fangen wollen. Sie nennen ihn den Alien. Als kleiner Gauner mit der Angewohnheit, seine Feinde mit einem Baseballschläger zu verprügeln, verdiente er sich seinen Namen, weil er einen Mann erledigte, während dieser Ridley Scotts Science - Fiction - Klassiker sah - und der blieb, umden Film danach zu Ende zu sehen. Das neue Ziel des Aliens ist Detective Sergeant Brant, dessen Brutalität ihn auf der Südseite Londons nicht beliebt gemacht hat. Der Alien bricht in Brants Wohnung ein, schlägt mit seinem Louisville-Schläger auf ihn ein und foltert ihn, bis er ohnmächtig wird. Als Brant aufwacht, ist der Alien verschwunden und Brant hatBlutdurst. Mit der Hilfe seines Partners, des krebskranken Chief Inspector Roberts, wird Brant London verwüsten. Aber als seine Vendetta, die ihn bis nach New York führt, zu etwas Furchterregenderem als einem Baseballschläger schwingenden Psychopathen führt, wird Brant sich fragen, ob er vielleicht nicht besser hätte in London bleiben sollen."Aliens Bändigung" nimmt uns mit auf eine unvergessliche Reise durch die dunklen Straßen von London, Dublin und New York. Ken Bruens Markenzeichen sind sein sündhaft dunkler Sinn für Humor, schlagkräftige Dialoge und Charaktere, die so echt sind wie Zahnschmerzen.

London Boulevard is a masterful work of double-dealing and suspense from Ken Bruen, one of the great crime writers of our time. Now a major motion picture starring Colin Farrell and Keira Knightley, written and directed by Oscar-winning screenwriter William Monahan of The Departed.When Mitchell is released from prison after serving three years for a vicious attack he doesn't even remember, Billy Norton is there to pick him up. But Norton works for Tommy Logan, a ruthless loan shark lowlife with plans Mitchell wants nothing to do with. Attempting to stay out of Logan's way, he finds work at the Holland Park mansion of faded movie actress Lillian Palmer, where he has to deal with her mysterious butler, Jordan. It isn't long before Mitchell's violent past catches up with him and people start getting hurt. When his disturbed sister Briony is threatened, Mitchell is forced to act.

Jack Taylor brings death and pain to everyone he loves. His only hope of redemption - his surrogate son, Cody - is lying in a hospital in a coma. At least he still has Ridge, his old friend from the Guards, though theirs is an unorthodox relationship. When she tells him that a boy has been crucified in Galway city, he agrees to help her search for the killer. Jack's investigations take him to many of his old haunts where he encounters ghosts, dead and living. Everyone wants something from him, but Jack is not sure he has anything left to give. Maybe he should sell up, pocket his Euros and get the hell out of Galway like everyone else seems to be doing. Then the sister of the murdered boy is burned to death, and Jack decides he must hunt down the killer, if only to administer his own brand of rough justice. Ken Bruen's Cross is a suspenseful and deeply moving mystery.

Ireland, awash with cash and greed, no longer turns to the church for solace or comfort. But the decapitation of Father Joyce in a Galway confessional horrifies even the most jaded citizen. Jack Taylor, devastated by the recent trauma of personal loss, has always believed himself to be beyond salvation. But a new job offers a fresh start, and an unexpected partnership provides hope that his one desperate vision--of family--might yet be fulfilled.An eerie mix of exorcism, a predatory stalker, and unlikely attraction conspires to lure him into a murderous web of dark conspiracies. The specter of a child haunts every waking moment.Explosive, unsettling, and totally original, Ken Bruen's writing captures the brooding landscape of Irish society at a time of social and economic upheaval. Priest is evidence of an unmistakable literary talent.

Seems impossible, but Jack Taylor is sober---off booze, pills, powder, and nearly off cigarettes, too. The main reason he's been able to keep clean: his dealer's in jail, which leaves Jack without a source. When that dealer calls him to Dublin and asks a favor in the soiled, sordid visiting room of Mountjoy Prison, Jack wants to tell him to take a flying leap. But he doesn't, can't, because the dealer's sister is dead, and the guards have called it "death by misadventure." The dealer knows that can't be true and begs Jack to have a look, check around, see what he can find out. It's exactly what Jack does, with varying levels of success, to make a living. But he's reluctant, maybe because of who's asking or maybe because of the bad feeling growing in his gut.Never one to give in to bad feelings or common sense, Jack agrees to the favor, though he can't possibly know the shocking, deadly consequences he has set in motion. But he and everyone he holds dear will find out soon, sooner than anyone knows, in The Dramatist, the lean and lethal fourth entry in Ken Bruen's award-winning Jack Taylor series.

Somewhere in the teeming heart of London is a man on a lethal mission. His cause: a long-overdue lesson on the importance of manners. When a man gives a public tongue-lashing to a misbehaving child, or a parking lot attendant is rude to a series of customers, the "Manners Killer" makes sure that the next thing either sees is the beginning of his own grisly end. When he starts mailing letters to the Southeast London police squad, he'll soon find out just how bad a man's manners can get. The Southeast is dominated by the perpetual sneer of one Inspector Brant, and while he might or might not agree with the killer's cause and can even forgive his tactics to some degree, Brant is just ornery enough to employ his trademark brand of amoral, borderline-criminal policing to the hunt for the Manners Killer. For if there's one thing that drives the incomparable inspector, it's the unshakeable conviction that if anyone is going to be getting away with murder on his patch, it'll be Brant himself, thank you very much.Ken Bruen's Calibre is original and astonishing hard-boiled noir.

Jack Taylor is walking the delicate edge of a sobriety he doesn't trust when his phone rings. He's in debt to a Galway tough named Bill Cassell, what the locals call a "hard man." Bill did Jack a big favor a while back; the trouble is, he never lets a favor go unreturned.Jack is amazed when Cassell simply asks him to track down a woman, now either dead or very old, who long ago helped his mother escape from the notorious Magdalen laundry, where young wayward girls were imprisoned and abused. Jack doesn't like the odds of finding the woman, but counts himself lucky that the task is at least on the right side of the law. Until he spends a few days spinning his wheels and is dragged in front of Cassell for a quick reminder of his priorities. Bill's goons do a little spinning of their own, playing a game of Russian roulette a little too close to the back of Jack's head. It's only blind luck and the mercy of a god he no longer trusts that land Jack back on the street rather than face down in a cellar with a bullet in his skull. He's got one chance to stay alive: find this woman.Unfortunately, he can't escape his own curiosity, and an unnerving hunch quickly turns into a solid fact: just who Jack's looking for, and why, aren't nearly what they seem.The Magdalen Martyrs, the third Galway-set novel by Edgar, Barry, and Macavity finalist and Shamus Award-winner Ken Bruen, is a gripping, dazzling story that takes the Jack Taylor series to explosive new heights of suspense.

When Jack Taylor blew town at the end of The Guards his alcoholism was a distant memory and sober dreams of a new life in London were shining in his eyes. In the opening pages of The Killing of the Tinkers, Jack's back in Galway a year later with a new leather jacket on his back, a pack of smokes in his pocket, a few grams of coke in his waistband, and a pint of Guinness on his mind. So much for new beginnings.Before long he's sunk into his old patterns, lifting his head from the bar only every few days, appraising his surroundings for mere minutes and then descending deep into the alcoholic, drug-induced fugue he prefers to the real world. But a big gypsy walks into the bar one day during a moment of Jack's clarity and changes all that with a simple request. Jack knows the look in this man's eyes, a look of hopelessness mixed with resolve topped off with a quietly simmering rage; he's seen it in the mirror. Recognizing a kindred soul, Jack agrees to help him, knowing but not admitting that getting involved is going to lead to more bad than good. But in Jack Taylor's world bad and good are part and parcel of the same lost cause, and besides, no one ever accused Jack of having good sense. Ken Bruen wowed critics and readers alike when he introduced Jack Taylor in The Guards; he'll blow them away with The Killing of the Tinkers, a novel of gritty brilliance that cements Bruen's place among the greats of modern crime fiction.

Blitz represents Ken Bruen at his edgy, lethal, and sharp-tongued best, and will reward fans of his Jack Taylor novels with another astonishing, smart, and brutal vision from a writer rapidly becoming one of the best of his generation. The basis for the 2011 major motion picture starring Jason Statham, Paddy Considine, and Aidan Gillen. The South East London police squad are down and out: Detective Sergeant Brant is in hot water for assaulting a police shrink, Chief Inspector Roberts' wife has died in a horrific car accident, and WPC Falls is still figuring out how to navigate her job as a black female investigator in the notorious unit. When a serial killer takes his show on the road, things get worse for all three. Nicknamed "The Blitz" by the rabid London media, the killer is aiming for tabloid immortality by killing cops in different beats around the city.

Angie, kaltschnäuzig und herzlos, manipuliert sie Männer wie Frauen, um sie für ihre Pläne einzusetzen. Auch wenn die erste Bombe im Paradise Cinema nicht explodiert, hält sie die Southeast London Police Squad um Detective Sergeant Brand mit weiteren Bombenankündigungen und Erpressungen in Atem. Als sinnlichste, verrückteste Serienmörderin überhaupt terrorisiert sie die Straßen Londons. Ist unberechenbar, wild, wütend. Ganz wie Inspector Brand, der für seine knochenbrecherischen Methoden berüchtigt ist und sich wenig um politische Korrektheit schert. So entwickelt sich ein Drama voller schwarzem Humor. Bruen spinnt eine schnelle, scharf geschliffene Geschichte voller respektloser Schurken auf beiden Seiten des Gesetzes. Für Fans von Elmore Leonard und Jim Nisbet.

“Hip, violent and funny vignettes of the mean streets of southeast London tie together this rowdy set of short novels” from the Irish crime writer (Publishers Weekly). At sixty-two, Chief Inspector Roberts is nearly too old to be a cop, but he makes up for his age with a ferocity that the younger detectives cannot match. After four decades on the force, he has a daughter who hates him, a wife who cheats, and a bank account that grows emptier every year. But on London’s darker streets, Roberts is a force to be reckoned with. With his partner, the gleefully brutal Detective Sergeant Brant, Roberts looks for every policeman’s dream: the White Arrest, a high-profile success that makes up for all their past failures. In A White Arrest, their target is a bat-wielding lunatic who knocks off drug dealers. In Taming the Alien, they hunt a mysterious hit man who earned his nickname by carrying out a hit while watching Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic. And in The McDead, Roberts and Brant set their sights on a cunning kingpin ruling London’s southeast side. Gripping and gritty, Ken Bruen’s White Trilogy is an unforgettable noir portrait of London’s seedy underworld.