Calibre
A Novel
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4.3 • 9 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Inspector Brant is on the trail of a serial killer obsessed with sending Londoners an important message in this lightning-paced, hard-boiled noir from Ken Bruen, Calibre.
Somewhere in the teeming heart of London is a man on a lethal mission. His cause: a long-overdue lesson on the importance of manners. When a man gives a public tongue-lashing to a misbehaving child, or a parking lot attendant is rude to a series of customers, the "Manners Killer" makes sure that the next thing either sees is the beginning of his own grisly end.
When he starts mailing letters to the Southeast London police squad, he'll soon find out just how bad a man's manners can get. The Southeast is dominated by the perpetual sneer of one Inspector Brant, and while he might or might not agree with the killer's cause and can even forgive his tactics to some degree, Brant is just ornery enough to employ his trademark brand of amoral, borderline-criminal policing to the hunt for the Manners Killer. For if there's one thing that drives the incomparable inspector, it's the unshakeable conviction that if anyone is going to be getting away with murder on his patch, it'll be Brant himself, thank you very much.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Bruen's superb new pulp-inspired novel featuring Inspector Brant (after 2005's Vixen), the Southeast London Police Squad is plagued by a serial murderer who's determined to give his victims a lesson in manners. Taking a cue from Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, the "Manners Killer" believes that anyone who behaves rudely in public (e.g., verbally abuses a store clerk, slaps a child) is fair game. He soon finds that he's no match for Brant, Bruen's amoral, sociopathic brute of a detective ("He was heavily built with a black Irish face that wasn't so much lived in as squatted upon"). While his methods may be questionable, Brant gets results, and we find ourselves secretly cheering him on. Meanwhile, Brant is writing his first crime novel, Calibre, and aspires to become the English Joseph Wambaugh. Of course, he doesn't let the fact that he can't write deter him; Brant just nicks the stories from his cop buddy Porter Nash. Bruen's furious hard-boiled prose, chopped down to its trademark essence, never fails to astonish.
