A TOWER Rose Up In Brooklyn

I first heard about TOWER at the Baltimore Bouchercon, when I met Reed Farrel Coleman (right) walking around wearing a ‘TOWER’ t-shirt. ‘What’s that?’ says I. ‘A collaboration with Ken Bruen,’ says he, ‘out next year with Busted Flush.’ ‘Christ on a motorised mangle,’ says I, ‘that’s genius.’
  Sir Kenneth of Bruen has been writing twisted noir pastiches with Jason Starr for a few years now, of course, over at Hard Case Crime, but TOWER sounds like a different prospect entirely. Quoth David Thompson at Busted Flush:

“Born into a rough Brooklyn neighbourhood, outsiders in their own families, Nick and Todd forge a lifelong bond that persists in the face of crushing loss, blood, and betrayal. Low-level wiseguys with little ambition and even less of a future, the friends become major players in the potential destruction of an international crime syndicate that stretches from the cargo area at Kennedy Airport to the streets of New York, Belfast, and Boston, to the alleyways of Mexican border towns. Their paths are littered with the bodies of undercover cops, snitches, lovers, and stone-cold killers.
  “In the tradition of THE LONG GOODBYE, MYSTIC RIVER, and THE DEPARTED, TOWER is a powerful meditation on friendship, fate, and fatality. A twice-told tale done in the unique format of parallel narratives that intersect at deadly crossroads, TOWER is like a beautifully crafted knife to the heart.
  “Imagine a Brooklyn rabbi / poet — Reed Farrel Coleman — collaborating with a mad Celt from the West of Ireland — Ken Bruen — to produce a novel unlike anything you’ve ever encountered. A ferocious blast of gut-wrenching passion that blends the fierce granite of Galway and the streetwise rap of Brooklyn. Fasten your seat belts, this is an experience that is as incendiary as it is heart-shriven.”

  Sold! TOWER is due next autumn. Stay tooned for further details …

A Radical New Departedure

You didn’t read it here first, folks. Courtesy of a Ken Bruen-shaped birdie, news filters through from the NoirCon in Philly that the Oscar-winning scribe of Martin Scorsese’s THE DEPARTED, William Monahan, is to make his directing debut with a script based on Ken Bruen’s LONDON BOULEVARD. Quoth Variety:

William Monahan has teamed with Quentin Curtis to acquire rights to the Ken Bruen novel LONDON BOULEVARD.
  Monahan has nearly completed the script, and plans to make his directing debut on the crime drama this fall.
  LONDON BOULEVARD revolves around a South London criminal who, after release from prison, tries to give up the gangster life by becoming a handyman for a reclusive young actress.
  Monahan will produce with Curtis, with whom he also acquired the John Pearson book THE GAMBLERS with Monahan planning to write that script for Warner Bros.
  Monahan, who won the Oscar for writing THE DEPARTED, will adapt the remake of the Korean film THE CHASER for WB and just signed with Paramount to write a fact-based thriller about a drug dealer who traded a prison sentence for an undercover stint. – Michael Fleming

Like, it’s not as if Ken Bruen’s weekend wasn’t already going well, what with him being bigged-up Irish style at the NoirCon, where he is this year’s honoured guest along with Dennis McMillan. Oh, and did we mention that Hollywood is going BUST? No? Sorry about that, we’ve been a little busy lately …