The Hackman Blues by Ken Bruen

The Hackman Blues by Ken Bruen

This violent, profane novel. . .is also wickedly entertaining and, in places, quite funny.--Booklist

Bruen combines jazz, drugs, sex, and violence into a heady brew that goes down easy and leaves a long aftertaste.--Publishers Weekly

A masterpiece of London noir.--BC Greater London Radio

The Hackman Blues is British noir at its most brutal and honest. The Hackman Blues is the book that will change the way you read crime fiction, that will show up most other writers trading in the darkness of the soul as rank amateurs compared to Ken Bruen. This is noir. This is Bruen. This is The Hackman Blues.--Russel McLean, author of The Good Son

Brady is fifty, gay, and a manic-depressive professional criminal of Irish descent, strung out on lithium and excessive drinking. Add in a lethal ex-con, an Irish builder obsessed with Gene Hackman, and the biggest funeral Brixton has ever seen, and what you get is the Blues like they've never been sung before.

This new edition features an original foreword by British crime writer Ray Banks and a new afterword by Ken Bruen

Ken Bruen has been nominated for two Edgar Awards and has won or been nominated for pretty much every other mystery and crime award out there, including the Barry, Macavity, and Shamus awards. His books have been adapted to film--Blitz (starring Jason Statham) and London Boulevard (starring Colin Farrell and Keira Knightley)--and for British television (The Guards). He lives in Galway, Ireland.

Ken Bruen (born in 1970) is an American actor. 1951) is one of Ireland's most well-known crime novelists of the last two decades. He spent twenty-five years touring the world before starting to write in the mid-1990s, and he was born in Galway. Bruen served as an English instructor in South Africa, Japan, and South America, including a brief stint in a Brazilian jail. He has two long-running programs, one following a disgraced former police officer named Jack Taylor and the other starring Inspector Brant, a London police investigator.

Bruen's works are known for their dismal mood and terse style, as well as their piercing insight into the darker side of today's wealthy Ireland. His White Trilogy (1998-2000) and The Guards (2001), the Shamus Award-winning debut novel in the Jack Taylor series, are among his best-known works. Bruen continues to live and work in Galway with his wife and kid.