14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classic London noir from a great Irish writer, 9 Nov 2001
By A Customer
Ken Bruen is becoming known for his hard-hitting anti-crime novels and in London Boulevard he takes on the plot of the classic Hollywood movie, Sunset Boulevard, and adapts it to a London setting. There are about three plots going on in this book, all of them expertly handled and there's a cast of characters Dickens would have been proud of. From the minute our anti-hero Mitch steps out of prison, you know it's going to be a cracking novel. THis is Ken Bruen at his very best, and as Taming the Alien was my favourite crime novel of all time, that's really saying something. Superb stuff to give the likes of Pelacanos, Leonard and Ellroy a run for their blood-stained dollar.
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11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hardboiled at its best, 20 Feb 2003
This review is from: London Boulevard (Bloodlines) (Hardcover)
After serving three years in prison for an assault he can't remember committing, Mitchell is out and about in London. An old mate sets him up with a flat and a job run by a loan shark and Mitchell gets beat up and finds he isn't crazy about that life. Then he gets set up as a live-in handyman for an ex-actress with money and cars and sex and everything seems to be going great -- except blokes from the loan sharking end have it in for him. Mitchell also has a crazy sister, Bri, and soon meets and falls in love with a beautiful and smart woman, Aisling, who returns his love. But with Mitchell enraging half the folks he meets and the rest turning up dead, both he and the people he loves are soon in danger. Can his increasingly violent methods keep them all alive?
LONDON BOULEVARD is one of the best books I have read this spring. Tough, gritty, written in an almost diary-like style, this is one of the few novels I truly had trouble putting down. I was sitting up in bed at one in the morning thinking, "Just a couple more pages, that's all," and before I knew it a couple more had turned into several more chapters. Ken Bruen has created a sordid tale of love and violence that is criminally easy to read. His characters aren't particularly loveable, but they aren't supposed to be. His pacing, plotting, dialogue all sizzle and leave the reader hungering for more right down to the slam bang finish.
My one complaint with this book, which has nothing to do with the author and his work, is the publishing press's horrible job. Periods are missing, commas and quotes are backwards, at one point a whole ten to twelve line blank chunk has been inserted in the text, the list goes on. I cannot believe a publishing company, even a small one called Do Not, could get away with this sort of mess.
In short, if you like hard boiled, fast paced, and tough talking little novels, LONDON BOULEVARD is a winner I couldn't recommend more highly.
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9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Badly in need of an editor, 6 Jun 2005
Bruen is a good storyteller but having bought this book on the strength of these five star ratings, I was very disappointed. The main problems for me were continuity mistakes, unconvincing dialogue and Bruen overdoing his listing affectation (dropping increasingly random and pointless lists into the prose every few pages). None of these problems would have been all that difficult to resolve. Even the dialogue problem could have been addressed by changing the background of the main characters to explain why they speak like members of the Irish middle-classes. However, as it stands the book is very annoying and frustrating to read - all the more so for the fact that it could have been pretty good with a bit of decent editing.
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