Customer Reviews

Once Were Cops

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ken Bruen writes beautifully bleak and violent tales in a sparse prose which isn't quite like any other author I've read. You'll breeze through this book because Bruen makes a paragraph out of every one or two sentences and the publisher double spaces the paragraphs. So although this clocks in at 300 pages I think we could have saved a few trees and fit the entire story comfortably into 100 pages or so. Despite my quibble that the book could have had a smaller footprint, the remarkable, the truly remarkable thing, is that Bruen is such a gifted writer that he can cram a whole paragraph into one terse, word-niggardly line. Amazing.

This is very good "guy" fiction and the first act in the novel is laced with bitter, violent men, backed into corners, lashing out with bone-crunching ferocity. I've always enjoyed well-written books about the good guys taking it to the bad guys under a black flag. Stephen Hunter and James Lee Burke write wonderful examples of this fiction. But there aren't any good guys in this book. No, what you get here are mob guys who decide to mess with the wrong dude. Stories about bad guys running afoul of much worse guys is about as much fun as it gets. Just think of The Wild Bunch by Peckinpah; there are some guys you just don't mess around with. This is a blistering, savage tale of the NY mob pushing the buttons on the wrong guy and a very good, albeit brief, read.

Once Were Cops focuses on Michael O'Shea, an Irish Guardsman, who participates in an exchange program to become an NYPD cop. He's keen on this because, unlike in Ireland, American cops get to carry guns. He's keen on carrying a gun because O'Shea is a serial killer and murderous psychopath who likes to cause mayhem and carnage. As it turns out, the NYPD is the perfect place for him and he finds himself in good company with his new partner Kurt Browski, an anti-social thug of a cop. When the mob tries to put a collar on O'Shea with a contrived, damning photograph, O'Shea doesn't react as anyone might have thought. Psychopaths rarely do, at the stage is set for a convoluted tale of multiple betrayals and plot twists.

I enjoyed this story although some may find it grim, bleak and depressing. So very typically Irish actually. No one does grim, bleak and depressing quite like the Irish, unless it's the Russians, but Russian misery is generally about group oppression while Irish misery is generally about harrowing personal bleakness. There's plenty you'll find depressing about this tale, but if you love lyrical violence, and scary dudes taken out by even scarier dudes, then this a good, solid read.

New York City's finest must have been on vacation and the not-so-finest are keeping not-so-exactly law and order. I thoroughly enjoyed every page of it.

"Once Were Cops" is very sparely written. There aren't any extraneous words about anything: characters, setting, backgrounds. I could almost hear Sgt. Joe Friday saying "Just the facts....". This could be a poster child for Noir.

The Amazon description is more than adequate (and may give away too much). You will meet some very granite-boiled folks who make a habit of doing unto others before ....

Bruen doesn't give you a chance to catch your breath and it's over all too soon.

When I find an author to try for the first time, it is rare that I start with his latest book. I figure the author is at the top of his form by then and then reading what went before may be a letdown. I don't think that will be a problem with Bruen. I will be ordering some (all?) of those previous books soon.

Note: For those of you who are easily shocked - the book has rough language (but realistic street vernacular); very little gore; and just a little sex. None of it is gratuitous and all is in keeping with the characters and story.

Profane, a. [L. profanus; pro, before, and fanum, a temple; lit., forth from the temple, hence, not sacred, common, profane] ... 2. Irreverent towards God or holy things; (from Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd ed.)

This may be the darkest novel I have ever read. A lot of the people in this book are nasty s.o.b.'s who would stab their partner, friend or lover for a slight advantage. Who do you root for in a story such as this?

Kebar and Shea are well described partners on the NYPD. The reader gets to know them intimately. These are no cardboard figures from a dime store novel. They are believable, although almost never likeable.

Bruen uses the first person to tell the story, shifting between characters from one chapter to the next. This device seemed choppy in the early stages, but soon the story hooked me, and I no longer noticed . I was engrossed. The story kept my interest, although it was not a real page-turner. To write a page-turner, you have to create characters that the reader can care about.

The main characters meet, brutalize each other, and form a partnership of sorts. There are early hints about Shea, but I kept reading, thinking that I didn't know where the author was going. It turned out that I did know. I was merely hoping that I was wrong.

Bruen chose rosary beads as a murder weapon. I wondered if he ever used them himself. They are too flimsy to make a real murder weapon, and too small to fit over most people's heads. That may be a small detail, but the beads play a large part in the novel. Bruen managed to make them metaphorical and profane at the same time.

There is some light in the novel, but this story is mostly about darkness. Modern Crime noir fans may like that. I'm not one of them. I would compare this to the movie The Departed. It is very well done, but I felt like taking a shower when I finished. You may be entertained by this novel, but it won't do you any good.

First Sentence: "Where do I begin?'

Matthew Patrick O'Shea, knows as Shea, lives in Glasgow and is a member of the Guarda. He always wanted to be a decent human being and a cop. But he has a dark side that keeps him from being that decent human; a long a way from it.

He transfers to New York City as part of a police exchange and partners with Kebar, someone almost as out of control as Shea. They go from being partners and almost friends to enemies, with innocents damaged along the way.

Bruen is an exceptional writer. His writing is crisp and spare. Full paragraphs are the exception rather than the rule. Not a word is wasted or superfluous. He conveys more in a sentence that others do in a chapter.

He is the only author I know who can write a book about thoroughly despicable characters and make me love the book. And Shea is a thoroughly despicable character. It was, however, nice to have Jack Taylor put in a cameo appearance and there be a link to a Jack Taylor book.

This book is definitely not for everyone. It is dark, profane and brutal. It is also excellent.

Ken Bruen's delivery of "Once Were Cops" - writing candidly, bluntly and occasionally awkwardky - follows the great American literary form founded and amended by Hammett, Spillane and others of the mystery milieu.

I state the delivery can be awkward as Bruen and his editors double space between paragraphs, most of which are simple one sentence pithy statements, and always indented from the second line and beyond - as opposed to indenting the first line only.

After the reader's eye gets accustomed to this different depiction of the written word on paper, the reader will discover that the writer is a serious mystery novelist who touches within the soul of the main characters and their occasional friends. In this case we must meet the unique and disturbing character of Michael O'Shea whose grotesquely harsh upbringing tarnished his soul and character to a point where he is as demonic as those who ruined him.

In a great twist of fate, appearingly benign O'Shea woos the hardest cop of the NYPD - Kebar - whose heart is as hard as steel, but whose underlying feelings are as easily manipulated as a child's. When O'Shea is to be yet another short term partner of this irrepressible bad boy cop called Kebar, we discover Kebar's bark cannot scare the O'Shea psyche.

Slowly the book delivers us deeper in the psyche to show us that it is psychotic. And we learn that these bad boys have more in common with television's and Florida's "Dexter" than they have with the stereotypical cop or gumshoe Sam Spade. The "hardboiled fiction" seen in mystery novels of the 20th century are evolving into the 21st century with psychotics bearing gold badges whose inner self is reviewed, and eschewed.

I liked the simplicity of the writing style and especially liked the author's poignant thought references and police-like short dialogue. His use of the double space and indentation are too nouveau for this old reader. I hope that is only a fad. But, the book, like most mysteries, ends with an opening to make you want to purchase the ensuing work. And, I want to read the next hoping to learn who was it that did the unanswered crime - although I, like most others, have a suspicion that it was . . .

Ken Bruen is one of the better writers working in the genre of contemporary Noir, and this is one of his finer novels. It's basically the story of two New York cops, both of whom are tough, both basically honest, but both with problems that render them unable to play things totally straight. O'Shea is a former Irish guard who blackmails his way into a one-year gig on the NYPD force. He is young, brash, hard, and is a good cop. Just one problem: he has this thing where he sometimes feels the need to strangle women to death with his rosary beads. Kebar, O'Shea's partner, is also a rugged cop, one who makes a habit of setting villains straight the hard way. Kebar would like to remain an honest cop, but his problem is he's got a mentally disabled sister and his policeman's pay check won't allow him to afford the kind of care he wants her to have. Some thugs know this, and they use it to con Kebar into selling them police secrets. As O'Shea and Kebar work the NYC beat together, their secret lives become intertwined and this builds to a spine-tingling and dangerous climax. Bruen is like Jim Thompson, David Goodis, and Ed McBain all rolled into one writer, given an Irish twist, then spun through the screenplay to a Quentin Tarantino film. Fine book.

I've read hard-boiled before, love suspense and mystery. Short prose, cops and robbers, noir setting, and the anti-hero. There's always an anti-hero, that dark and brooding character you can't help but like.

In this novel, our protagonist isn't the anti-hero...he's the antagonist.

Written in the shortest and most terse prose I have yet to encounter (the entire book is double-spaced, one sentence summing up an entire scene, rarely using full dialogue but just snippets of conversations to sum the whole) we delve into the mind of Matthew O'Shea, a born psychopath. Think Hannibal Lecter or Dexter and you've got an idea of what Shea is like. For him, killing isn't just a means to an end...it's a necessity, as required as eating and breathing. He can't control himself but rarely tries. Meanwhile, he's also the new cop on the block. Tired of life amongst the Guards in Ireland, he, err...persuades a politician to let him join a sort of cop-exchange problem so that he can work for the NYPD, and wield a gun for the first time. He gets partnered with a guy nicknamed Kebar, a real bulldog of a cop who has a lot of issues of his own. Shea appears to be the bright new star amongst cops, and the two form an unlikely friendship. Then, when we learn that Kebar is dirty, we get sent on a very fast, wild ride through betrayal, blackmail, murder and mayhem.

If the book sounds dark and maybe even disturbing, it's because it is. No happy faces and sunshine here. It's so dark that I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but if you liked Silence of the Lambs, then you should definitely give this a try. Oh, and you can forget a happy everyone-is-fine-and-dandy ending too. Our main character is a serial killer. Anything good that happens for him is really not good for someone else.

Still, I loved this book. I've read cop books before, but have never felt so immersed in one. Add to it the creepy and darkly enticing viewpoint of a serial killer, and you have a very interesting book that you can't help but read. The book is never boring, especially on the first run. The plot is completely unpredictable, because the main character is unpredictable. Normally I can guess the twists and turns in a book, but not this time. It caught me completely unaware, and I loved that.

So yeah, it's a short read, definitely worth picking up if you're looking for something to send a chill down your spine.

PRIEST WAS A GREAT NOVEL,THIS ON THE OTHER HAND IS THE AUTHOR TRYING TO HARD TO BE INNOVATIVE ,AND THE STORY SUFFERS,AND THE LOCATION CHANGE,HUH

Ken Bruen is never going to get mistaken as the author of 'Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms.' (Although it's amusing to contemplate how he would handle that particular story.)

He writes really dark novels about really nasty, brutal people. I thought he'd topped himself with 'American Skin', but this book is even darker. It centers around an Irish policeman who comes to the NYPD and is paired up with a really toughie from the local squad. Of course, the Irish policeman has his own dark secrets that make the toughie look like one of Rebecca's friends.

Thrown into the urban playground of the worst parts of NYC, they go wild. Literally.

Bruen matches James Ellroy's ability to get inside the head of psychopaths (see Ellroy's Killer on the Road for the penultimate take) in this book. Needless to say, this book is not going to come out well for any of the main characters. However, even knowing that in advance, Bruen throws in enough unexpected plot twists to really delight.

One of the other reviewers compared Bruen to the very fine James Burke. I like Burke a lot, but I think the comparison to Ellroy is more apt. Ellroy and Bruen are both fans of stripped down prose, whereas Burke is often downright elegiac (think of his descriptions of Montana in the Dave Robicheaux series.) Burke's villains do bear some similar resemblance to Bruen's protagonists, but Burke doesn't do fundamentally bad people as protagonists. Burke's protagonists are often seriously flawed, but Bruen's are often flawed, flogged, and irretrievably screwed before you're out of the second chapter of the book.

If you like dark characters, really stripped down prose, and plots with an amphetamine pulse, you're going to like this book a lot.

In Once Were Cops, Ken Bruen brings Mick cop Matthew O'Shea to the NYPD through a police work exchange program. O'Shea is paired with Kurt Kebar Browski, a brutal cop who does not play well with others and does not want a partner. Kebar is a good cop who is also on the take but for an understandable reason, and his conflicting interests cause problems for he and O'Shea and unwanted attention from Internal Affairs. O'Shea enjoys the ability to carry a gun and the women available to NYPD officers, but he has a dark and violent secret to hide as well.

Once Were Cops is written in Bruen's more minimal style, which is more similar to the Jack Taylor series than the Brandt books. This book is a fine example of how dialogue almost exclusively can be used to bring characters to life, and Bruen manages to immerse the reader in a dark and violent world without saying too much about what it looks like; Bruen says just enough to set the tone and the reader can infer the rest. I love his economy of words.

Bruen's books are not for the faint of heart, as his world is filled with violence and psychopaths. But those who appreciate how good and evil can reside in the same person and fans of hard-boiled crime know that Bruen can't be beat.