Customer Reviews

He Kills Coppers (Harvest Book)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The writing is so excellent & London is done with the acuity of Dickens. Arnott's depiction of Great Britain teetering toward dissolution is truly amazing, like a Red Giant about to blow.

I've been on a London binge: LONDON FIELDS (M. Amis), CAPITAL (M. Duffy), and now HE KILLS COPPERS. So good I read it one sitting. And like passive people everywhere I am into detail, which Arnott provides so artfully. Especially good is an English soccer riot. What do you call these guys? Hooligans? Rude boys? Anyway, this mass-spectacle is right up there with DeLillo's awesome crowd episodes: the Moonie wedding at Yankee Stadium in MAO II, the epic Giants game in UNDERWORLD. So satisfying.

I loved The Long Firm; it was wonderful. So, naturally, I bought author Arnott's second book, He Kills Coppers. After the opening sequence, I started to wonder if I was having an extended senior moment (age often has nothing to do, I've discovered, with those senior moments. A tedious book can induce them; so can bad rap music.) I couldn't figure out which character was which, what was happening, or why.

This is a book that could have used some serious definition, instead of simply placing asterisks between sections. Those asterisks, one learns after much confusion, indicate a shift to another character. And some of the characters are written in third person, some in the first. As well, the copy-editing leaves much to be desired. (Who's instead of whose was one of my favorite goofs.) References to both Beatniks and hippies in supposedly the same era distorts the time frame--Beatniks were of the 50s, hippies of the latter 60s and early 70s. So it's not only hard to jump from one character to the next, it's also tough figuring out the era.

At moments, the book leaps to life and for twenty or thirty pages it becomes gripping. Then the grip eases and we're back in the muddle--reading of characters about whom it's hard to care; killers, cops, thugs of every stripe. And, finally, an ending that leaves one thinking, "So what?"

A very disappointing effort.

Arnott's second volume is part of a three volume series, all covering many of the same characters, and time from the "swinging" 60's through the Thatcher era into the mid-90's in London's world of crime/police/media. Focused on London's criminal class, police, and some odd psychopaths, the three books cover intertwined stories, some of which begin in volume 1, and others that wind-up in volume 3. No its not Ellroy, but that is a stupid comparison, style wise, and story wise. Instead, compare Arnott's work to Martin Amis, and see the difference -- intersting, albeit homicidal, characters, people aware of their own fame, like professional athletes, except their event is evil doing, violaters of England's class system, yet slaves to it. To Americans, the characters are sometimes not easily accessible - the "bent" coppers do love their wives, fall out with their children, and range from kingpin masonic evildoers, to members of "the firm within the firm" who beleive in their work of keeping order, and seedy members of the aristocracy.
American readers will marvel at the "middle class" villains, living in Surrey mansions next door to rock stars, and miss the jab of class consciousness. The struggle within the "Met" to gain control over the police aparatus, separated between the "uniform" versus the "suits" stands our view of police on its head. Here the "uniforms", the working class "plod" seize control from the "suits" of Scotland Yard (and TV fame), the corrupt aspiring middle class of policedom ---JUST AS in crime, the same sort of revolution takes place. By the end of volume three, the "great stately" villains of voloume 1, have become media darlings under Tony Blair, selling juicy biographies, the stars of trendy 90's movies like "The Krays."
Ellroy and other Americans should be so lucky to get this story organized -- Ellroy especially is dynamite on 40's and 50's police corrpution in LA. the dawn of 60's arayan opression. BUT, where is the time of Rodney King's abusers, the OJ police more concerend with their hairstyles and appearances on "E" TV than how much evidence was planted (as in the Rampart scandal) or the LAPD "gang bang" mentality which lead young patrol and CHP officers to create, and proudly wear their own "gang tattoos."
Arnott opens up a wonderful window into London's underground.. openly gay mob bosses (recall what happened to Tony Sporano's underling, 40 years later than these stories), serial killer tabloid hacks, bent to corrput cops, academic crime groupies, and the emerging 90's industry of gangster nostalgia (Guy Ritchie's movie career).
Together these three volumes make as magnetic a read as Ellroy, with a lower voltage style, but just as sharp a shot to the jaw pacing and story telling, and a unique and undiscovered world for American readers. I'm only sorry there isn'at a fourth volume???

More than simply a police procedural, He Kills Coppers spans 3 decades and deeply explores the minds of three men. Noir themes dominate the story as all three men wrestle with their consciences, finding it difficult to live with the choices they have made or were forced to make. By the end of the story helpless despair has begun to take hold of each of these men.
This is a crime novel that is dominated by a feeling of quiet desperation, a feeling that is generated through the lives of the three lead characters. Jake Arnott does an excellent job of recreating the mood and attitudes of London in 1966, giving the mood an avid, energetic atmosphere. It's an optimistic tone with which to open and one that is squashed pretty quickly.

Arnott tells the story through the voices of his three main characters. Frank Taylor is a cop desperate to advance up the ranks of the police force but is all too aware of the corruption within the ranks and can't quite remove himself from the taint; Tony Meehan is a writer, a freelance journalist, but he harbours dark and very disturbing impulses and is able to identify all too easily with the crime figures he writes about; Billy Porter is an ex-army corporal, ex-convict, and small time crook who is about to become number one on the police hit parade because...He Kills Coppers.

Its England 1966 and the police force are trying to stamp out the corruption that's running rampant in the city streets. We meet Frank Taylor, a young plain clothes detective on the police force's fast-track promotion scheme. He has been drafted into the taskforce charged with cleaning up the streets of London, more specifically, the clip joints of Soho where tourists are being regularly fleeced. You see, the soccer World Cup has come to London, bringing with it a healthy influx of tourists just begging to be robbed.

But Frank soon discovers that the corruption has spread to the ranks of the police force and much to his disappointment in himself, he decides that it's easier to go along and accept the dirty money that comes his way rather than risk setting himself apart from his fellow officers. This is a decision that will haunt him through the years covered by the story. The murder of 3 fellow police officers gives him his focus pushing him to strive for promotion in order to solve the case. Part of his motivation is an inescapable feeling of guilt over the death of one of the slain cops.

Freelance reporter Tony Meehan is an unusual character in the story, seemingly having no real relevance to the main story other than to somehow provide a link between the police and the criminals they are chasing. Meehan though is a troubled man, haunted by the sinister thoughts that he winds up fighting his whole life. However, Tony Meehan remains an enigma in He Kills Coppers. A reporter with secrets and with issues that are never resolved, without fail the sections that spotlight him have a decided noirish quality to them.

Billy Porter is a man on the run. He starts out as a lost soul who then tries to lose himself physically as the police net closes around him. He's a tragic figure with whom I was surprised to find that I felt sympathy for, even though he was a killer with little or no conscience. Like with Meehan and Taylor, we learn all about Billy Porter inside and out, giving us a full understanding of what motivates him and what has brought him to the desperate point in his life in which he has arrived. More than anything else, it is Jake Arnott's characterisations that makes this an involving story.

He Kills Coppers starts at a furious rate with the hustle and bustle surrounding the World Cup, the clean up of the streets of London and then the massive manhunt for the killer of 3 cops. But the story eventually settles down to focus on effect the early events would have on the lives of the central characters.

Initially the narration is a little confusing as Arnott uses multiple voices to tell the story with the point of view changing several times in each chapter. I found, though that I quickly settled into the routine of changing voices following an asterisk in the middle of a paragraph break. Once I understood that the story would be told on three fronts I found that it was effective mechanism that was nicely controlled by the author.

If you loved The Long Firm, you'll really love He Kills Coppers. Arnott is a master at crafting round characters and each of the 3 narrators here jump from the page. Its nice to know that British noir is alive and well in Jake Arnott's hands.

This thing really crackles along for a while and I was expecting great things, but then the dialogue goes flat, the characters thin out and, blah.
It's still preeeetty good, but just.