ONCE WERE COPS
Ken Bruen
St. Martins Minotaur
Thriller
ISBN: 9780312384401
With the subtlety of a sledgehammer, ONCE WERE COPS has broadened the definition of noir crime fiction. Ken Bruen always has gone his own dark way while exploring such matters; here, however, he takes a quantum leap into territory previously hinted at but nonetheless unexplored. The bad guys in this book are awful, but the good ones are worse, and the plot careens through the pages like a car with brake failure trying to negotiate the downward slope of a coastal highway chock-full of switchbacks.
ONCE WERE COPS picks up where Bruen’s Jack Taylor series leaves off. Taylor even makes a brief appearance, thus effecting a continuity, however tangential, between that series and what is sure to be the beginning of a new one. Michael O’Shea --- “Shay” to his acquaintances --- is a member of The Guards, Ireland’s police force. Through out-and-out blackmail, Shay is able to connive his way into a law enforcement exchange program between Ireland and the United States, thus becoming a member of New York’s finest. Shay is not exactly welcome and seems initially to be a fish out of water, even as he makes contact with Irish expatriates.
However, his pairing with a veteran cop named Kebar is an epiphany. Kebar is badly twisted, a dangerous man who is owned by the Mob. The etiology of Kebar’s sell-out is his mentally disabled sister; every dollar he earns, honestly and otherwise, goes to her care. His anger at life’s injustice, combined with Shay’s smoldering dark side, makes for a violent but effective crime-fighting tool. But when the mob tries to bring Shay into its fold, what little control he had breaks, and the fish out of water reveals itself as an amphibious piranha. Bruen gives his readers dribs and drabs of Shay’s true nature, at times with such a subtle flourish that one needs to re-read a passage here and there in order to fully understand that whatever pre-conceived notion one had about him was totally wrong.
If Bruen had wanted to write a book about a really bad lieutenant in the making, he could have taken ONCE WERE COPS to its logical conclusion and wound up with an unforgettable stand-alone work. Alternatively, he could have used this novel as an introduction to a series about an extremely bent rogue cop on the streets of New York. Instead, Bruen goes a different way. Shay’s involvement with an Irish woman named Nora and her subsequent brutal murder bring another element into the mix. Nora’s brother Joe is a retired New York cop living in Florida. His sub rosa investigation into the killing reveals truths that are a shock to him, and to the reader. By the end, Joe’s investigation is only beginning. Yet, given what has gone before, can even Joe be trusted?
ONCE WERE COPS is an amazing book, full of twists and turns and genre-busting events. Bruen pokes and probes at dark corners where even spiders refuse to tread. This is a work of brilliance, of nightmares, an instant classic that is sure to become a standard of noir fiction to which all others will be measured.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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