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The Hackman Blues
Ken Bruen
The Do-Not Press, paperback, 155 pages, £7.00
Review by Gerald Houghton (1997)

We’re not saying The Do-Not Press are covering up, but it’d be easy, had you a mind, to accuse the marketing of Ken Bruen’s second novel of the sin of omission. The Hackman Blues is a Queer book.

That’s not a criticism, of course, just stating facts noticeably absent from the back cover itself. And since Tony Brady is such an enthusiastic Queer (in, as he points out, the Derek Jarman sense) then it really ought to merit a mention, don’t you think?

He’s also on lithium. Brady’s not a nice man. He has a vicious temper about him, in and out of gaol. ‘I’m the wrong call of fifty, gay, and manic depressive . . . [I] look like Ken Livingstone on speed.’ But he’s a good man to know in London if you want things found. Like Jack does. His daughter Roz. So Brady and pal Reed find her with a small time gangster in Brixton. Jack wants her back, but with such a valuable commodity in hand, why not play both ends against the middle?

That’s your plot. It doesn’t take much. The rest adheres strictly to the quote Brady drops near the beginning: ‘Keep taking the crazy pills and shut the fuck up.’ It’s nasty. Cruel, even, swiftly descending through plot into violence for violence’s sake. But unlike most recent Brit crimers, Bruen’s laughs are super-black, the second half cataloguing pure existential brutality. And short. The Hackman Blues racks up 155 pages with a substantial typeface and a lot of blank pages. But that’s good too: he’s been Ken Bruen, goodnight.

There are snags: a few too many clichés, one too many sub-Tarantino movie drops. (NB: Kevin Kline wasn’t in The Untouchables). But Bruen’s singlemindedness, brevity, spectacularly offensive ending and gratuitous attacks on Oasis demand our attention. One of Do-Not’s best.