Ken They Do It? Yes They Ken …

There’s a story about Sir Kenneth of Bruen (right) that may or may not be apocryphal, even though he tells it himself, about the time he did a reading alongside a well-known British author. The lady in question was first up on the podium, and held up a copy of her latest novel, and a copy of Ken’s, which latter was noticeably slimmer than her own doorstop. “That,” she said, indicating her novel, “is what I call value for money.” Cue hoots of laughter, the jape being done in the spirit of joie de vivre, etc. Ken being up next, he held up the same two books, and indicated the well-known British author’s novel. “That,” he said, “is what one of my books looks like before I take out all the crap …”
  Ken’s books are, of course, so stripped down they’re in danger of being done for public indecency. Which may or may not explain why he’s bagged so many movie options recently: the novels are so sparely written, they are – c.f. James M. Cain – practically movie scripts even before some cack-handed screenwriter gets his grubby mitts on them.
  As Gerard Brennan reports over at CSNI – where he scoops me yet again, natch – Ken’s ONCE WERE COPS has just been picked up by yet another Tinseltown outfit, which makes it three novels he’s got in the movie pipeline now: BLITZ, with Jude Law on board; LONDON BOULEVARD, with Colin Farrell and Kiera Knightley; and ONCE WERE COPS. I’m also hearing rumours that an Irish production company have picked up THE GUARDS, and have optioned the entire Jack Taylor series, with a view to committing the battered bard of Galway to celluloid.
  The Big Question: Has the long overdue arrival of the Jack Taylor novels on the movie-making scene come too late for the man who was at one point so hotly tipped to play Taylor, David Soul?
  The Bigger Question: Who should play Jack Taylor in the movies?

UPDATE: a little bird gets in touch all the way from Galway to say that I should keep my shell-like to the ground for news on AMERICAN SKIN getting a movie deal … in, like, the next day or so. Crikey! They’ll have to invent a new Oscar at this rate. “And the Oscar for Best Movie Adapted from a Ken Bruen Novel is …”

Bruen Up A Storm

God bless The Rap Sheet, which does all the heavy lifting by interrogating Reed Farrel Coleman (Jim Winter on thumbscrew duties) and discovering that he has a new novel coming out next year called TOWER, a collaboration with (dum-dum-DUM!) Sir Kenneth of Bruen. That makes it, by my reckoning, at least four novels Ken Bruen was writing at some point in the last twelve months – TOWER, ONCE WERE COPS, SANCTUARY and THE MAX, his latest Hard Case Crime collab with Jason Starr.
  Meanwhile, Brandon Books are issuing AMERICAN SKIN in hardback on this side of the pond, with the very handsome tome hitting a shelf near you on September 9th. Paula Murphy of the Mater Dei Institute of Education at Dublin University is on the case, with an extended essay entitled ‘Ken Bruen’s AMERICAN SKIN and Postmodern Media Culture’, which kicks off thusly:

Analyzing Ken Bruen’s novel AMERICAN SKIN, this essay argues that his crime novel illustrates the necessary tension of postmodern identity in the Western world; a tension between individual national and cultural identities and the universalizing force of globalization. The novel is set in Ireland and America and has characters from each country. However, rather than resolve the tension between native and acquired identities that the novel sets up, Bruen chooses to set his novel in the larger socio-cultural scene of the globalized, postmodern world. Consequently, the novel uproots identity from its national context and situates it in the heterogeneous flux of postmodern culture …

  For lots more in a similar vein, jump on over here …

Always Judge A Book By Its Cover # 114: Paul Nagle’s IRONIC

We hadn’t really planned to mention Paul Nagle again until autumn rolls around, as his debut novel, IRONIC, isn’t due on the shelves until October 16, but then we caught a glimpse of said tome’s cover, which fair took our breath away. In fact, so audaciously minimalist was it, that we initially thought it was some kind of prototype. But no! Kudos to the design elves responsible; we haven’t been so impressed with Irish crime fiction artwork since Ken Bruen’s forthcoming ONCE WERE COPS and (koff) some chancing wastrel’s THE BIG O … And is that a human body swirling around in the smoke? Or have we just been hitting the old Elf Wonking Juice™ a little too hard this weekend? Only time, that notoriously doity stoolie rat, will tell …

“It’s Writing, Jim, But Not As We Know It.”

How time flies, eh? It seems like it was only last week when we were letting you know that Ken Bruen’s latest, SANCTUARY, is due in June from Transworld and that – woah, that was last week. And now the Edgar-nominated Sir Kenneth of Bruen gets in touch to let us know that ONCE WERE COPS (funkadelic new cover, right) will be St Martins’ lead title come September, and that “it’s darker than AMERICAN SKIN”. Crumbs! Has Bruen cracked the whole ‘multiple universe’ malarkey at the heart of quantum physics, and marshalled all his theoretical selves to write novels at virtually the speed of light? And can we get a (theoretically infinite) Star Trek episode out of it? Hmmmm. Only time, that notoriously doity rat, will tell …

An Unfair Cop, Guv

Brian Lindemuth was kind enough to drop us a line and let us know that Fantasy Book Spot is expanding its reach by moving into the realms of mystery and crime fiction. And where better place to start than with the publication of an excerpt from Sir Kenneth of Bruen’s (right) sparkling new – and tantalisingly as yet unpublished – standalone, ONCE WERE COPS, which comes courtesy of Fantasy Book Spot’s third issue of their Heliotrope e-zine. The opening salvo runneth thusly:

ONCE WERE COPS, by Ken Bruen

Kurt Browski, built like a shit brickhouse and just as solid. A cop out of Manhattan South, he was having a bad day.
Much like most days.
His heritage was East European but contained so many strands, not even his parents knew for sure it’s exact basis.
And cared less.
They wanted the American Dream.
Cash … and cash … and yeah, more of same.
They didn’t get it.
Made them mean.
Very.
His mother was a cleaner and his father had been a construction worker but had settled into a life of booze, sure beat getting up at 5.00 in the morning.
His father beat his mother and they both beat Kurt.
Somehow, he, if not survived them, got past them and finished High School, joined the Cops.
He wanted to be where you gave payback.
That was how he saw the force, emphasis on force. He was certainly East European in his view of the boys in blue, they had the juice to lean on … who-ever-the-fuck they wished.
And he did.
Hard.
His early weapon of choice was a K-bar.
Short, heavy and lethal and you could swing it real easy, plus, they rarely saw it coming.
They were watching your holstered gun and wallop, he slid the bar out of his sleeve and that’s all she wrote.
His rep was built on it and over the years, he became known as Kebar.
Did he care?
Not so’s you’d notice. He didn’t do friends, so what the fuck did he care …

For the rest, jump on over to the latest Heliotrope. But keep a weather eye out for that K-bar, eh?