Book Review: Calibre

Reviewed By: Catherine Thompson - RAM

Calibre     Amazon US TPB Amazon UK PB Amazon Canada TPB
Ken Bruen
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Hard Boiled
St. Martin’s Minotaur, $17.95 trade paperback, 183 pages

Somewhere in southeast London is a man on a mission: to restore civility to a tiny corner of the world. His method: murdering anyone who displays bad manners in public. A man berates a child in a department store; a parking attendant is rude to a series of customers. The “Manners Killer” makes sure that the last thing either of them sees is death.

But he starts mailing letters to the police, he comes up against a man who doesn’t know the meaning of the word “polite.” Detective Sergeant Brant views the world with a perpetual sneer, treating everyone from the lowest snitch to his superintendent with the same cavalier, devil-may-care-but-I-don’t attitude. Brant is amoral to the nth degree, willing to put a colleague at risk of murder or even stir up the pot with a letter or two of his own to get the killer.

The above is a very simplified version of what’s going on in Calibre. The plot is actually very scatter-gun in approach, and as in most of Bruen’s work, the reader shouldn’t expect all the threads to be tied in neat little bows on the last page. No, Bruen writes like real life: it’s messy, convoluted, and full of loose ends.

What you can expect when you open Calibre is to be dragged into a wild ride of a tale, full of brutality and poetry. Even when Bruen steps outside of Ireland, he takes it with him, right into the middle of London. His is a cutthroat poetry, the poetry of the gutters and back alleys, of pickpockets and whores. And it is beautiful.

Catherine Thompson - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Catherine Thompson - RAM

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