Calibre

Starred review from June 5, 2006
In Bruen's superb new pulp-inspired novel featuring Inspector Brant (after 2005's Vixen
), the Southeast London Police Squad is plagued by a serial murderer who's determined to give his victims a lesson in manners. Taking a cue from Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me
, the "Manners Killer" believes that anyone who behaves rudely in public (e.g., verbally abuses a store clerk, slaps a child) is fair game. He soon finds that he's no match for Brant, Bruen's amoral, sociopathic brute of a detective ("He was heavily built with a black Irish face that wasn't so much lived in as squatted upon"). While his methods may be questionable, Brant gets results, and we find ourselves secretly cheering him on. Meanwhile, Brant is writing his first crime novel, Calibre
, and aspires to become the English Joseph Wambaugh. Of course, he doesn't let the fact that he can't write deter him; Brant just nicks the stories from his cop buddy Porter Nash. Bruen's furious hard-boiled prose, chopped down to its trademark essence, never fails to astonish.

May 1, 2006
Bruen is so prolific that there is mounting evidence he could supply his own book-of-the-month club. It doesn't seem to affect his quality, though: if you like him, you'll still like him; if you don't, you still won't. Switching gears from his Jack Taylor series (" The Dramatist," 2006), Bruen returns to cops-and-robbers London and the cast of characters last seen in " Vixen" (2005). This postmodern crime novel pits the Ed McBain-loving antihero Sergeant Brant against a new villain, the Jim Thompson--obsessed Manners Killer. Well, " against" is a strong word in this morally murky universe, but one of them does have a badge. Bruen has referenced McBain's 87th Precinct series often enough that it's clear he is writing his own version, though the brutality, cynicism, and racism of the characters almost guarantee they won't reach as wide an audience. Bruen is so stinting on description that it's hard to keep some of them straight--but the completely corrupt, satanically funny Brant probably could carry the whole thing on his shoulders. Here's to the next Bruen-of-the-Month.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)