The Hackman Blues
By Ken Bruen
1997
First Published
3.84
Average Rating
228
Number of Pages
Fans of Bruen...will enjoy seeing the Keystone Crooks get picked off one by one."" - Kirkus Reviews. Brady, our narrator, is fifty, gay, and a manic-depressive professional criminal of Irish descent, strung out on lithium and excessive drinking. Today he has neglected to take his medication, which makes him even more manic, violent, and unpredictable. Brady is hired to find a powerful Irish construction chief's daughter. Known as the ""Hackman,"" the chief believes his daughter is in Brixton, a multi-racial part of London that is predominantly black. Brady recruits his former cell-mate, a black thug, and another ""associate"" to get the girl back. This doesn't please the construction chief, who's an out-and-out racist. The whole thing goes horribly wrong when Brady tries to play her black gangster boyfriend against the ""Hackman"" and his Irish heavies in a complicated ransom ploy. The Hackman Blues is ""a masterpiece of London noir"" (BBC Greater London Radio).
Avg Rating
3.84
Number of Ratings
134
5 STARS
29%
4 STARS
35%
3 STARS
28%
2 STARS
7%
1 STARS
1%
goodreads
Author
Ken Bruen
Author · 41 books
Ken Bruen, born in Galway in 1951, is the author of The Guards (2001), the highly acclaimed first Jack Taylor novel. He spent twenty-five years as an English teacher in Africa, Japan, S.E. Asia and South America. His novel Her Last Call to Louis Mac Niece (1997) is in production for Pilgrim Pictures, his "White Trilogy" has been bought by Channel 4, and The Guards is to be filmed in Ireland by De Facto Films. He has won Two Shamus awards by Private Eye Writers of America for the best detective fiction genre novel of the year for The Guards(2004) and The Dramatist(2007). He has also received The Best series Award in February 2007 for the Jack Taylor novels from The Crime Writers Association
