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9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hardboiled at its best, 20 Feb 2003
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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