He Kills Coppers: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Muddled and, ultimately, disappointing
Review: I loved The Long Firm; it was wonderful. So, naturally, I bought author Arnott's second book, He Kills Coppers. After the opening sequence, I started to wonder if I was having an extended senior moment (age often has nothing to do, I've discovered, with those senior moments. A tedious book can induce them; so can bad rap music.) I couldn't figure out which character was which, what was happening, or why.

This is a book that could have used some serious definition, instead of simply placing asterisks between sections. Those asterisks, one learns after much confusion, indicate a shift to another character. And some of the characters are written in third person, some in the first. As well, the copy-editing leaves much to be desired. (Who's instead of whose was one of my favorite goofs.) References to both Beatniks and hippies in supposedly the same era distorts the time frame--Beatniks were of the 50s, hippies of the latter 60s and early 70s. So it's not only hard to jump from one character to the next, it's also tough figuring out the era.

At moments, the book leaps to life and for twenty or thirty pages it becomes gripping. Then the grip eases and we're back in the muddle--reading of characters about whom it's hard to care; killers, cops, thugs of every stripe. And, finally, an ending that leaves one thinking, "So what?"

A very disappointing effort.

Rating:
Summary: Funny, violent and vintage Arnott
Review: If you loved The Long Firm, you'll really love He Kills Coppers. Arnott is a master at crafting round characters and each of the 3 narrators here jump from the page. Its nice to know that British noir is alive and well in Jake Arnott's hands.

Rating:
Summary: Dark Police Procedural
Review: More than simply a police procedural, He Kills Coppers spans 3 decades and deeply explores the minds of three men. Noir themes dominate the story as all three men wrestle with their consciences, finding it difficult to live with the choices they have made or were forced to make. By the end of the story helpless despair has begun to take hold of each of these men.
This is a crime novel that is dominated by a feeling of quiet desperation, a feeling that is generated through the lives of the three lead characters. Jake Arnott does an excellent job of recreating the mood and attitudes of London in 1966, giving the mood an avid, energetic atmosphere. It's an optimistic tone with which to open and one that is squashed pretty quickly.

Arnott tells the story through the voices of his three main characters. Frank Taylor is a cop desperate to advance up the ranks of the police force but is all too aware of the corruption within the ranks and can't quite remove himself from the taint; Tony Meehan is a writer, a freelance journalist, but he harbours dark and very disturbing impulses and is able to identify all too easily with the crime figures he writes about; Billy Porter is an ex-army corporal, ex-convict, and small time crook who is about to become number one on the police hit parade because...He Kills Coppers.

Its England 1966 and the police force are trying to stamp out the corruption that's running rampant in the city streets. We meet Frank Taylor, a young plain clothes detective on the police force's fast-track promotion scheme. He has been drafted into the taskforce charged with cleaning up the streets of London, more specifically, the clip joints of Soho where tourists are being regularly fleeced. You see, the soccer World Cup has come to London, bringing with it a healthy influx of tourists just begging to be robbed.

But Frank soon discovers that the corruption has spread to the ranks of the police force and much to his disappointment in himself, he decides that it's easier to go along and accept the dirty money that comes his way rather than risk setting himself apart from his fellow officers. This is a decision that will haunt him through the years covered by the story. The murder of 3 fellow police officers gives him his focus pushing him to strive for promotion in order to solve the case. Part of his motivation is an inescapable feeling of guilt over the death of one of the slain cops.

Freelance reporter Tony Meehan is an unusual character in the story, seemingly having no real relevance to the main story other than to somehow provide a link between the police and the criminals they are chasing. Meehan though is a troubled man, haunted by the sinister thoughts that he winds up fighting his whole life. However, Tony Meehan remains an enigma in He Kills Coppers. A reporter with secrets and with issues that are never resolved, without fail the sections that spotlight him have a decided noirish quality to them.

Billy Porter is a man on the run. He starts out as a lost soul who then tries to lose himself physically as the police net closes around him. He's a tragic figure with whom I was surprised to find that I felt sympathy for, even though he was a killer with little or no conscience. Like with Meehan and Taylor, we learn all about Billy Porter inside and out, giving us a full understanding of what motivates him and what has brought him to the desperate point in his life in which he has arrived. More than anything else, it is Jake Arnott's characterisations that makes this an involving story.

He Kills Coppers starts at a furious rate with the hustle and bustle surrounding the World Cup, the clean up of the streets of London and then the massive manhunt for the killer of 3 cops. But the story eventually settles down to focus on effect the early events would have on the lives of the central characters.

Initially the narration is a little confusing as Arnott uses multiple voices to tell the story with the point of view changing several times in each chapter. I found, though that I quickly settled into the routine of changing voices following an asterisk in the middle of a paragraph break. Once I understood that the story would be told on three fronts I found that it was effective mechanism that was nicely controlled by the author.


Rating:
Summary: A page-turner
Review: The story of the murderer Billy Porter, as told by various people whose lives he affected.

This entertaining crime novel is Arnott's follow-up to "The Long Firm" - although it's not strictly a sequel, it's similar in format, and several of the characters from the earlier novel reappear. I thought that it was a good read, though I imagine that it will not surprise or overly impress real crime fiction fans (I am a strict amateur!).

The action takes place mostly in 1966, the strongest part of the book in my opinion, then shifts to 1971 and then again to 1985. Arnott paints a picture of an English underworld in which both criminals and corrupt police operate to their mutual advantage. Yet, this is not a self-contained substratum of society - the dividing lines between the criminal world and "respectable" society are very grey.

Arnott's England is one which is increasingly at odds with itself: the tension of the "swinging" yet still repressed 1960s; prone to mindless violence (soccer riots of the 1970s); and riven by the bitter strife of the mid-1980s. The establishment has lost its way, become corrupt and lost the confidence and respect of the masses it purports to lead.

I enjoyed this novel (as I did "The Long Firm"). Whether or not Arnott can go on to develop new themes in future novels remains to be seen.

Rating:
Summary: Funny, violent and vintage Arnott
Review: This thing really crackles along for a while and I was expecting great things, but then the dialogue goes flat, the characters thin out and, blah.
It's still preeeetty good, but just.