The Hackman Blues (Bloodlines) (Bloodlines S.) [Paperback]

Ken Bruen (Author)

Book Description

Series: Bloodlines S. | Publication Date: April 13, 1998

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).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A gay, manic-depressive, thoroughly disreputable ex-con with a violent streak, Tony Brady is also vibrantly alive and capable of dropping insightful quotes from Genet, Baldwin or Maupin gleaned from his prison reading. At the beginning of this slang-filled noir caper from London, Tony has settled in to a sweet racket with a former cellmate from Wormwood Scrubs, Elias Rasheed Mohammed?Reed for short. Together they conduct a useful little business finding lost items, even if they have to make the items disappear so that they can recover them for the grateful owners. Tony is approached by a wealthy builder named Jack Dunphy and asked to find his runaway teenage daughter. With Reed and little effort he succeeds. The problem is that the Brixton tough the daughter is with isn't going to give her up easily. And when Reed and Tony decide to play both ends against the middle, violence is the inevitable result. Bruen combines jazz, drugs, sex and violence into a heady brew that goes down easy and leaves a long aftertaste.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 156 pages
• Publisher: Do Not Pr (April 13, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1899344225
• ISBN-13: 978-1899344222
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #808,614 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brutal and fast-paced thriller, December 20, 2003

By 

Rae "rae_2756" (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hackman Blues (Bloodlines) (Bloodlines S.) (Paperback)

Tony Brady is not a nice man, which sets him apart from many crime/thriller/suspense novel protagonists. He's not even particularly likeable. Further, he's manic-depressive, and walks a fine line between being able to exist in the world with the rest of us, and being carted off to the nearest padded room. He is, however, smart and cynical, with a wickedly funny take on the world around him.

Hackman Blues is as much an essay on modern life as it is a crime novel, and works terrifically well on both levels. Tony Brady is asked to find the daughter of a local 'businessman' (i.e. crook). He enlists the aid of his friend and former prison mate, Elias Rasheed Mohammed, and the adventure begins.

The novel doesn't give the reader much chance to catch their breath from beginning to end, and includes many plots twists and a heart-breaking ending.

It's not for those who like everything wrapped up in a neat package, or who have trouble with violence or profanity. But Tony Brady has a moral code of sorts that he's determined to live by, and watching him struggle to do the right thing is a great read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gritty, intensely dark crime novel, July 21, 2007

By 

Willeford's Kid "willefordskid" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hackman Blues (Bloodlines) (Bloodlines S.) (Paperback)

Read any interview by the amazingly talented Ken Bruen and you'll discover that he has plenty of demons that need out. In THE HACKMAN BLUES Bruen certainly releases plenty of them onto the page. In this early novel, we follow one of the most unsympathetic characters in modern crime fiction, and yet, somehow, we still like him despite all his evils. Perhaps even because of his dark nature.

Here's a street-wise PI of sorts given the job of tracking and finding a wealthy man's (with a Gene Hackman fixation) young wife, who appears to be shacking up with a local drug dealer. Our anti-hero not only finds her but decides to kidnap her and ransom her off--to both her husband AND the drug dealer boyfriend. Although a number of his friends are put into awful danger, our anti-hero forges ahead through blood, bullets, bombs, and other gut-wrenching carnage.

Unlike Bruen's more recent novels, THE HACKMAN BLUES is thin on motivation and emotion. It's simply a short, full-throttle crime novel populated by one kind of villain or another, and it'll keep you turning the pages in spite of your revulsion and keep you nailed to your seat. Bruen's exorcism of personal demons can be seen on every powerful, blood-soaked page.

4 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good Parts Don't Quite Gell, May 10, 2000

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Hackman Blues (Bloodlines) (Bloodlines S.) (Paperback)

Some interesting possibilities (gay, bipolar, tough guy, criminal- detective as lead, Brixton-centered plot, oddball crime boss) don't really gel into anything that interesting. The con is asked to find a white girl in Brixton, which sounds simple, but causes all kinds of complications. The whole bipolar thing wears thin quickly, and the style isn't quite on.