"He who laughs last usually didn't get the joke."

This is Book 1 of the White Trilogy, which constitute the first 3 books of the Brant series. So this is where it all began.

First line: "R & B they were called. If Chief Inspector Roberts was like the rhythm, then Brant was the darkest Blues."

In this entry the precinct must deal with two crime sprees. One group is killing drug dealers and hanging them up on lampposts. Another guy is murdering one by one the members of the national cricket team. Setting the tone for subsequent entries, the story is told in rapid short vignettes, featuring ever-changing characters and events.

And all the cops are seeking the mythical "white arrest"--the bust that turns a cop into a hero, a career changing event, and one so awesome that it wipes out all previous screwups.

3 stars ( )

Sudeste de Londres. Un asesino en serie que se hace llamar el Árbitro se está cargando a los miembros del equipo inglés de críquet. Mientras, en Brixton, a un grupo de «vigilantes» le ha dado por asesinar y colgar de farolas a traficantes de drogas. Ahí es cuando los R&B de la policía londinense —el inspector jefe Roberts y el sargento detective Brant— deciden entrar en acción. Ambos necesitan desesperadamente ese «Gran Arresto» que les sirva para limpiar su expediente. Y es que los dos acumulan innumerables denuncias por extorsión, amenazas y brutalidad policial, justo lo que las nuevas autoridades quieren erradicar del cuerpo de policía londinense.

serial killer of cricket players

A really quick read and a short book so great if that's what you're looking for.

When I started this book I frankly found it hard to take. Everybody, and I mean everybody, in the book was revolting. I guess I got used to it as I persevered and made it to the end. Verdict - decent enough. ( )

Ken Bruen novels are inhabited by a few (very few) good cops, a whole bunch of “bent” ones, and a few brutal criminals who happen to wear police badges while committing their crimes. His is a violent world in which criminals and cops compete on an even playing field – rules and rights, be damned. A White Arrest, the first book in Bruen’s White Trilogy, is a prime example of that world.

London’s Chief Inspector Roberts and Detective Sergeant Brant do not do things by the book. On the good cop/brutal cop spectrum, they are much closer to being characterized as criminal cops than as good cops. But, despite their wild-man tactics, they are not particularly effective at solving crimes. Consequently, their jobs are often on the line. They badly need a “white arrest,” - the high profile arrest of a criminal whose crimes have caught the imaginations of the public – if they are ever to have any real job security.

Brant, the book’s main character, abuses his police power so badly that he has long forgotten how to make a legal arrest. He physically abuses suspects, takes bribes when he can get them (and steals cash laying around crime scenes when he hopes no one is looking), runs a liquor store tab he has no intention of ever paying, and is not above stiffing the pizza delivery guy on occasion. But all that makes him the perfect cop to stop the murderers terrorizing two very different segments of the London population.

A White Arrest is Ken Bruen at his wildest – and that is really saying something. Reading this one is like reading under a bright strobe light as Bruen presents one short scene after another in such rapid succession that it is often difficult to determine which character is speaking – or, for that matter, even involved in the segment. But, frustrating as this approach often is, it works well to set the tone of the dual investigations that take on lives all their own.

Roberts and Brant, like them or not, are a forced to be reckoned with in their patch of southeast London. Criminals beware.

Rated at: 3.5 ( )