- Unknown Binding: 308 pages
- Publisher: Pacific Northwest Laboratory (1992)
- Language English
- ASIN: B0006DIAYO
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
Rilke on Black (Mask Noir)
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First Sentence
I'm not a criminal. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
I'm not a criminal. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
Nick is an ex-bouncer with a father in the gutter; Dex, a class-A nutter; and Lisa, a druggie femme fatale with a bad mouth. When they decide to take hostage a club owner who has a taste for the poetry of Rilke, the ensuing chaos was like nothing I'd read before. Every page burst with style and substance, poetry and street patois, anger and adrenaline. All of it told with an ease of skill that is the mark of a true original.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Sleeper
24 Mar 2001
Format:Paperback
I picked up Rilke on Black in a remainder lot somewhere and read it months later on a whim. For it's faults, this is a first novel of tremendous intensity by a writer whose works I now intend to hunt down. It's certainly energised me to track him and end up dashing this off.
Stylistically, Bruen throws so many punches so rapidly in this first novel that it's hard to track down influences. Certainly he's read and studied the classics, from Hammett to Ross Macdonald. For California, tho, substitute working class London. And the story is told by a guy Lew Archer didn't get to when he was a troubled adolescent.
Having mentioned faults, I should say that the rythmn of this book seems a bit off to me at times. The sheer impact of the narrative, however, tends to obscure the problem.
I've come away feeling Bruin's peers are more along the lines of Lou Reed and Iggy Pop than any literary school, and this is certainly no slur. Rilke on Black is a short slam dance of a book that casts a rather long shadow, a small canvas with details that emerge long after you've finished the book.
Certainly this isn't mass market stuff. If you appreciate precise, focused prose in a deceptively tight plot with disturbing undertones left and right, however, give Rilke on Black a shot. I feel this is something of a find.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Excellent Early Bruen
9 Feb 2008
Format:Paperback
Raymond CHandler once said to an editor that cut a description, claiming that the reader didn't care about that sort of thing, that he was wrong. Atmosphere, observation and feeling were ALL the reader cared about. They just didn't know it.
Which is something to keep in mind about Ken Bruen. Once in a while his plots can feel contrived (and sometimes they are great) but his sense of atmosphere - whether in London or Galway, always among hard men and tough women - never waivers. Rilke on Black is far superior to the similar Her Last Call to Louis McNiece. All Bruen's strengths are on display here. Characters are drawn effortless, with just a few strokes, and feel true to life.
It's great to see Inspector Brandt show up late in the novel, too. He's not yet the full blown creation that is Bruen's best achievement, but this book is a great sign of the things to come.
Which is something to keep in mind about Ken Bruen. Once in a while his plots can feel contrived (and sometimes they are great) but his sense of atmosphere - whether in London or Galway, always among hard men and tough women - never waivers. Rilke on Black is far superior to the similar Her Last Call to Louis McNiece. All Bruen's strengths are on display here. Characters are drawn effortless, with just a few strokes, and feel true to life.
It's great to see Inspector Brandt show up late in the novel, too. He's not yet the full blown creation that is Bruen's best achievement, but this book is a great sign of the things to come.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Good stuff
25 July 2010
Format:Paperback
Bruen is someone who has such high regard right now I was curious to see what his early work was like and I love this little book. Simple, well told, hard boiled as all get out and with that distinctive Bruen voice. A really great fast read.
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