He Kills Coppers: A Novel [Hardcover]

Jake Arnott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2003

The smoking-hot bestseller from London

A chance encounter in broad daylight. Three London policemen pull over a car and are gunned down. A number of people are irrevocably affected. Sid, a tabloid journalist who himself harbors more lurid personal scandal than anyone he condemns in print. Detective Sergeant Frank Taylor, officially on the rapid promotion track but increasingly conflicted about his identity as a cop and the hidden corruption in the department. Ex-soldier Billy Porter, who has drifted into a life of crime and onto the rapid track to perdition. His violent skills for survival are all he has. He is immensely sympathetic, and a killer.

Like Puzo and Robert Daily before him, Jake Arnott finds in the private realities of marginalized, desperate people, a longing for redemption that transforms their discontent into the forces and truths that underlie our lives.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Imagine a British version of James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential minus much of its imagination and blazing energy and you'll have some idea of this disappointing follow-up to Arnott's highly regarded 2001 debut thriller, The Long Firm (soon to be a BBC miniseries). Like Ellroy, Arnott chooses to tell his period story through multiple voices in this case, three young men whose lives and fates intertwine over the course of many years: Billy Porter, a soldier who becomes a criminal and winds up killing three police officers in 1966; Frank Taylor, an ambitious copper whose best friend and former partner was one of the victims; and Tony Meehan, a gay journalist with a psychotic streak. Using a real case (the killer's name was Harry Roberts, and British football hooligans and later Vietnam protestors used to sing, to the tune of "London Bridge Is Falling Down," "Harry Roberts is our friend,/ is our friend,/ is our friend./ Harry Roberts is our friend,/ He Kills Coppers!") and newsreel-like flashes from such actual events as the World Cup Final game between England and Germany and police raids on Soho vice dens, Arnott tries to paint a picture of a country crippled by moral decay, and usually succeeds in that department. Fans of the first book will recognize a few of the characters who make appearances here; the trouble is that none of the three protagonists is very interesting or original, and the words Arnott uses to bring their thoughts and feelings to life (Tony's "As I fought with my own personal Enemy Within I could content myself with voyeuristic pleasures in the slow surcease of my desperate longings" is fairly typical) fizzle rather than sizzle.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A great read." -- The New York Times Book Review

"Arnott pulls off an amazing feat of making a sadistic 1960s London mob boss fascinating." -- The Washington Post

"Ingeniously constructed . . . A terrific debut." -- Kirkus Reviews [starred]

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 340 pages
• Publisher: Soho Press; First. edition (July 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569472718
• ISBN-13: 978-1569472712
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,510,837 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book!, January 22, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: He Kills Coppers: A Novel (Hardcover)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fabulous, February 6, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: He Kills Coppers: A Novel (Hardcover)

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.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Muddled and, ultimately, disappointing, February 25, 2003

By 

Charlotte Vale-Allen (CT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: He Kills Coppers: A Novel (Hardcover)

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.