Vixen (Inspector Brant) [Paperback]

Ken Bruen (Author)

Book Description

Series: Inspector Brant | Publication Date: July 14, 2005

For the Southeast London police squad, it's rough, tough, dirty business as usual. The Vixen, the most sensuos, crazed female serial killer ever, is masterminding a series of lethal explosions. She is unpredictable, wild, angry--and the cops don't even know she exists.

Meanwhile, Inspector Roberts is helpless to stop the explosions and his subordinates aren't doing much better. Brant is consumed with an even-bigger-than-usual mean streak, and fast-rising Porter Nash finds himself facing serious health problems--everything to do with needles. PC MacDonald is determined to soldier on, whatever the cost, and the career of a new addition to the squad, WPC Andrews, starts spectacularly but with Falls as her mentor she's not expected to last long. At the top, Superintendent Brown is close to a coronary, and arresting the wrong man in a blaze of publicity is only the beginning of his problems.

If the squad survives this incendiary installment in Ken Bruen's blazingly intense series, they'll do so with barely a cop left standing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This new installment in Shamus-winner Bruen's Southeast London police squad thriller series-the little brother to the author's Jack Taylor mysteries-reunites the reader with the incorrigible Inspector Brant, Sergeant Doyle, Police Constable Falls and other old friends. This time Brant and cohorts must investigate a series of deadly extortion bombings masterminded by Angie James, aka "the Vixen." A female psychopath, James coldly manipulates men and women like human pawns to make her plan succeed. Bruen provides the usual grace notes, including quotes from other mystery novels, pithy dialogue and hyper-real violence. James as a malevolent force of nature adds needed energy to the narrative, while new characters like Falls's partner, Patricia Andrews, supply a few fresh faces on the police side. Brant's now trademark nefarious activities make for wickedly funny reading. The best scene in the novel might be when Brant leads Chief Inspector Roberts to a prostitutes' party and gets him drunk. However, overall, the novel seems curiously muted in effect compared to past efforts (Blitz, etc.). Bruen uncharacteristically slows his scenes with explanations, while the central mystery surrounding the Vixen is pedestrian.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Continuing that vicious, black-sheep cousin of McBain's 87th precinct series, Bruen's latest love letter to lowlife London (following The White Trilogy and Blitz) pits his bent coppers against an uneasy menage of opportunists who stumble on some dynamite and extort the police with random bombings. The trio's lowest common denominatrix, a deadly doll named Angie, gets more than chummy with policewoman Elizabeth Falls, whose swift descent past her debauched colleagues in succumbing to the ravages of bad living--no mean feat--provides a brilliantly bad example to her young trainee. The magnificent Sergeant Brant swaggers and sneers at the top of the food chain, trading favors with whores and generally enforcing the law of the jungle. As a bystander observes, "God help us all if they're the good guys." Bruen's lean, mean prose spins out a tale both tight and slight, but his unmistakable affection for irreverent scoundrels on both sides of the law gives this series a brutal,Clockwork Orange ebullience that is certain to please fans of such noir bards as Elmore Leonard, Jim Nisbet, and Scott Phillips. David Wright
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (July 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312327307
• ISBN-13: 978-0312327309
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,000,087 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Witchy Woman, March 28, 2007

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Gary Griffiths (Los Altos Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Vixen (Inspector Brant) (Paperback)

If you're a fan of intricate crime novels - arcane forensics and brainy CSI babes running around in lab coats - Ken Bruen's brand of bare knuckled police work in London's seedy southeast side is probably not your cup of, um, formaldehyde. In fact, about the only tools the rude and crude but bone-breaking-ly efficient Inspector Brant and his misfit cronies employ in reducing London's crime rate are brass knuckles and .38's. Likewise, Bruen's prose is about a subtle as a sledgehammer - raw edged stories told without apology, refreshing free of political correctness and daring to offend.

"Vixen" is another gem of the author's twisted brilliance - a simple and stripped down story wrapped around Angie, as cold and heartless a female killer to hit the pages since Caleb Carr's "Angel of Darkness". Recently released from prison, the foxy Angie seduces a pair of small time criminal brothers who are soon blowing up buildings and extorting cops. Typical of Bruen, the plot is merely a convenient background frame the banter and antics of the southeast London's eccentric police force. As expected, this is a fast moving, hard hitting drama laced with black humor and told in Bruen's unique and quirky vernacular. He may not be for everyone, but he is fresh and uninhibited - that rare writer who eschews convention and sets his own course. If you haven't discovered Ken Bruen yet, "Vixen" is as good as any a place to start.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very well done., April 9, 2005

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L. J. Roberts (Oakland, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Vixen (Brant S.) (Paperback)

This is a continuation of White Trilogy/Blitz series. As always, there is Bruen's precise, spare writing, which remind me just a bit of McBain, which lets you get to know the characters without excessive description. He characters are not particularly likable, but always interesting. Not as dark as his Jack Taylor books but still very well done.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars terrific thriller, August 26, 2005

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Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Vixen (Inspector Brant) (Paperback)

In London, Desk Sergeant Doyle receives the call about the bomb at the Paradise Cinema just before the explosion. The caller tells to cop to provide $300K or more bombs will ignite. The bomb was amateurish consisting of two sticks of dynamite and a simple timer with no one hurt. The second bomb a few days later proved a bit more sophisticated but still amateurish, but the extortion demand doubled.

While the cops like crazy Detective Sergeant Brant search for the bomber, Angie James and her associates the Cross brothers keep the blitz on by raising the ante with each new explosive incident. Angie also works on recruiting disaffected cop P.C. Falls upset for not receiving a promotion. As Brant and James head towards a collision, no one knows who of these two who feel so much alike yet think so differently than most people will survive.

The macabre fascinating Angie freshens the series with her inability to comprehend in terms of right or wrong but instead she feels life is for feeling good and to do that takes her into the realm of the criminal. Readers will enjoy her cat and mouse game with the cops with tough guy Brant her only competition. The story line is a combination of a police procedural enhanced by the sociopath subplot. Ken Bruen combines that into a terrific thriller starring two adversaries and a support cast burned by contact with either of them.

Harriet Klausner