Any Ken Bruen news is very very good news in these parts, so I was very pleased to hear that Mysterious Press are bringing back Ken Bruen's The White Trilogy in print and electronic format. They are also taking a deeper look at Irish Noir in the following video featuring Ken Bruen, who explains why Ireland is the home to some of the world's most important crime writers.
You can also catch the video on YouTube(link is external) or at Open Road Media(link is external)
In Bruen's The White Trilogy, he explores the dark, seedy streets of London through the eyes of two tough, aging cops on their search for their "White Arrest" every policeman's dream, the White Arrest is a high-profile success that makes up for all past failures. For Roberts and his brutal partner Brant, this means going up against a mysterious hitman in Taming the Alien, and a cunning kingpin in The McDead.
Hip, violent and funny vignettes of the mean streets of southeast London tie together this rowdy set of short novels by Bruen (The Guards), a modern Irish master of the hard-boiled.
Collecting A White Arrest (1998), Taming the Alien (1999) and The McDead (2000) for first U.S. publication, this omnibus showcases the investigations of the aging Chief Inspector Roberts and the brutish Detective Sergeant Brant, with the assistance of the unlucky-in-love Woman Police Constable Falls. They don't always solve their assigned crimes, but know perfectly well if they can nail the occasional major criminal-"the white arrest"-they'll be able to keep their jobs. Among numerous subplots, they pursue a serial killer stalking England's winning soccer team, a vigilante gang hanging drug dealers and a hit man known as "The Alien" because he whacked a victim engrossed in the video of that movie with a baseball bat just as the monster pops out of John Hurt's chest. But quieter moments, such as Brant's visit to his home county in Ireland, are just as interesting.