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kathydavie's review against another edition
5.0
Second in the Inspector Brant crime series based somewhere in a contemporary London and revolving around the police.
My Take
Lord, Bruen is such a depressive writer! And, I swear their cop shop is in need of help and a sense of focus. Roberts keeps making the wrong decisions; the desk sergeant doesn't have his head on right; and, Falls is so not paying attention. Although I did like their reaction when the duty sergeant informed the squad room that a would-be rapist had been shot and the room erupted in cheers!
I do like his chapter headings — Bruen uses quotes from different books/authors.
This story was easier to follow. Not quite so much chopped up and interrupted conversations but more of a peek inside everyone's heads. I do have to wonder how Bill has stayed on top for so long as many people as he has been betraying and turning on. A nice switch from the first book too in that everything ends well. Well, for the good guys anyway. Pretty amazing considering.
The Story
WPC Falls is hell on wheels. At least where men are concerned. Revenge. Oh hell. It's not so sweet after all. About the same time, Roy Fenton — his cousin was one of the E Gang — is considering a poetry contest as he considers the woman who aborted his baby and the poetry of tracking her down. Brant is feeling the guilt over PC Tone's murder. CI Roberts is drinking his own particular miserable news away only to get hit with more and more bad news as the week wears on. A tiny, very tiny, part of me feels bad for him.
Bill's gettin' busy in this tale: tells Fenton where to find his woman in return for the Alien havin' a chat with Brant which Brant returns in spades. For which payback, Bill really screws himself over while saving the taxpayers a load of cash. God knows what Bill has set up with Roberts and he's droppin' hints about Brant and Fiona.
Meanwhile, as Brant is recovering from his going over, he decides to head over to America. Have a look around for the Band-Aiders—he's positive they murdered Tone and he's determined to bring them to book. The good news is that the Band-Aiders met their match and the government will pay his way over to the States.
The Characters
Inspector Brant is a corrupt cop with a side of asshole. As part of his crusade to avenge PC Tone, he's on his way to America via Dublin where he meets his cousin Padraig de Brun who teaches him a new approach. Chief Inspector Roberts is about to reap his own reward right along the lines of the film noir he loves. I'm a bit confused about his daughter or is it daughters?? In A White Arrest, the daughter was named Sarah. Now Fiona Roberts is talking to their daughter Sharon. And I'm not getting the impression they have more than the one daughter…
WPC Falls is down and up and down in this one. That married bastard. The bit of delightful news. Then the attack after which she feels the love. Rosie is back from an aborted trip to India with her boyfriend most of which they spent in hospital.
Bill seems to be the head crook in this part of London with a daughter he sees as blessed with Down's Syndrome. He adores her but his sentiments stop and end with her.
Roy Fenton has a bad rep throughout southeast London, a.k.a., the Alien. No one wants to piss him off and Roy is submitting his poetry to contests. Stella Davis, Roy's ex, and her new husband, Jack, are about to end their day. Permanently. His trip to Mexico to celebrate gets cut a bit short.
The Cover and Title
The partial full face on the cover has got to be Fenton. There's that manic look in his eye and, when combined with the grin, eek!
The title is apt although the timing is off but we do get to see Taming the Alien.
My Take
Lord, Bruen is such a depressive writer! And, I swear their cop shop is in need of help and a sense of focus. Roberts keeps making the wrong decisions; the desk sergeant doesn't have his head on right; and, Falls is so not paying attention. Although I did like their reaction when the duty sergeant informed the squad room that a would-be rapist had been shot and the room erupted in cheers!
I do like his chapter headings — Bruen uses quotes from different books/authors.
This story was easier to follow. Not quite so much chopped up and interrupted conversations but more of a peek inside everyone's heads. I do have to wonder how Bill has stayed on top for so long as many people as he has been betraying and turning on. A nice switch from the first book too in that everything ends well. Well, for the good guys anyway. Pretty amazing considering.
The Story
WPC Falls is hell on wheels. At least where men are concerned. Revenge. Oh hell. It's not so sweet after all. About the same time, Roy Fenton — his cousin was one of the E Gang — is considering a poetry contest as he considers the woman who aborted his baby and the poetry of tracking her down. Brant is feeling the guilt over PC Tone's murder. CI Roberts is drinking his own particular miserable news away only to get hit with more and more bad news as the week wears on. A tiny, very tiny, part of me feels bad for him.
Bill's gettin' busy in this tale: tells Fenton where to find his woman in return for the Alien havin' a chat with Brant which Brant returns in spades. For which payback, Bill really screws himself over while saving the taxpayers a load of cash. God knows what Bill has set up with Roberts and he's droppin' hints about Brant and Fiona.
Meanwhile, as Brant is recovering from his going over, he decides to head over to America. Have a look around for the Band-Aiders—he's positive they murdered Tone and he's determined to bring them to book. The good news is that the Band-Aiders met their match and the government will pay his way over to the States.
The Characters
Inspector Brant is a corrupt cop with a side of asshole. As part of his crusade to avenge PC Tone, he's on his way to America via Dublin where he meets his cousin Padraig de Brun who teaches him a new approach. Chief Inspector Roberts is about to reap his own reward right along the lines of the film noir he loves. I'm a bit confused about his daughter or is it daughters?? In A White Arrest, the daughter was named Sarah. Now Fiona Roberts is talking to their daughter Sharon. And I'm not getting the impression they have more than the one daughter…
WPC Falls is down and up and down in this one. That married bastard. The bit of delightful news. Then the attack after which she feels the love. Rosie is back from an aborted trip to India with her boyfriend most of which they spent in hospital.
Bill seems to be the head crook in this part of London with a daughter he sees as blessed with Down's Syndrome. He adores her but his sentiments stop and end with her.
Roy Fenton has a bad rep throughout southeast London, a.k.a., the Alien. No one wants to piss him off and Roy is submitting his poetry to contests. Stella Davis, Roy's ex, and her new husband, Jack, are about to end their day. Permanently. His trip to Mexico to celebrate gets cut a bit short.
The Cover and Title
The partial full face on the cover has got to be Fenton. There's that manic look in his eye and, when combined with the grin, eek!
The title is apt although the timing is off but we do get to see Taming the Alien.
yorugua1891's review against another edition
5.0
Wonderful!
After a very nice first book in the series Bruen truly hit it out of the park with this one. Brant and Roberts are back, and with them come several of the characters from the first book, including the band aid couple that killed a cop and fled to America. Falls is jumping back from the disappointments in her love life and becomes a more central character in this installment, which I really enjoyed, since she is one interesting gal.
As is usually the case with Bruen, the characters are blunt and in most cases have zero tolerance for nonsense. There are really no "good guys", and even the main characters are wretched in their own way. If you are looking for a typical police procedural, you would do yourself a favor looking elsewhere. In Bruen's books the cases usually are resolved by someone presenting the solution to the cops, or by pure chance, or by the perpetrators getting in trouble due to their idiocy. What we do get is a superb work on character development. It's been two books and I am totally hooked and want to know more about the main characters. Also, this noir besides having the raw violence, the disregard for law and order and the self-destruction by some of the players has a nice and healthy dose of dark humor. I found myself laughing out loud often while I was reading it.
I have to acknowledge, I truly like the way in which Bruen writes, so it will be pretty hard for me to write a work by him that I dislike. That being said, in this case I absolutely loved the book, here you can see what Bruen is all about. Many of these characteristics will appear later in some of his finest works on the Jack Taylor series, but here they were already polished and ready for prime time. Finally, the decision to take part of the plot to the US was brilliant, and the clash of cultures provided opportunities for many witty dialogues.
After a very nice first book in the series Bruen truly hit it out of the park with this one. Brant and Roberts are back, and with them come several of the characters from the first book, including the band aid couple that killed a cop and fled to America. Falls is jumping back from the disappointments in her love life and becomes a more central character in this installment, which I really enjoyed, since she is one interesting gal.
As is usually the case with Bruen, the characters are blunt and in most cases have zero tolerance for nonsense. There are really no "good guys", and even the main characters are wretched in their own way. If you are looking for a typical police procedural, you would do yourself a favor looking elsewhere. In Bruen's books the cases usually are resolved by someone presenting the solution to the cops, or by pure chance, or by the perpetrators getting in trouble due to their idiocy. What we do get is a superb work on character development. It's been two books and I am totally hooked and want to know more about the main characters. Also, this noir besides having the raw violence, the disregard for law and order and the self-destruction by some of the players has a nice and healthy dose of dark humor. I found myself laughing out loud often while I was reading it.
I have to acknowledge, I truly like the way in which Bruen writes, so it will be pretty hard for me to write a work by him that I dislike. That being said, in this case I absolutely loved the book, here you can see what Bruen is all about. Many of these characteristics will appear later in some of his finest works on the Jack Taylor series, but here they were already polished and ready for prime time. Finally, the decision to take part of the plot to the US was brilliant, and the clash of cultures provided opportunities for many witty dialogues.
rosseroo's review against another edition
4.0
This slim book picks up a few months after the events of A White Arrest. Southeast London's DI Roberts has been diagnosed with skin cancer while his domestic situation is on life support, DS Brant is more or less recovered from a knifing, and WPC Falls is unexpectedly preggers. Meanwhile, the druggie homeless couple that killed a cop and knifed Brant have fled to the US, the local gangster lord is getting a little peeved with Brant's enthusiasm, a local psycho/hitman called Alien is back on the streets and looking for his ex-wife, and there's a serial arsonist at large. As before, the characters are outsized, the action quite violent, and the dialogue ratatat. Throw all these in a blender of staccato 1 to 3-page chapters, and the result is another Bruen's unique pulps.
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