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Michael O'Shea is a member of Ireland's police force, known as The Guards. He's also a sociopath who walks a knife edge between sanity and all-out mayhem. When an exchange program is initiated and twenty Guards come to America and twenty cops from the States go to Ireland, Shay, as he's known, has his lifelong dream come true — he becomes a member of the NYPD. But Shay's dream is about to become New York's nightmare.
Paired with an unstable cop nicknamed Kebar for his liberal use of a short, lethal metal stick called a K-bar, the two unlikely partners become a devastatingly effective force in the war against crime.
But Kebar harbors a dangerous secret: he's sold out to the mob to help his sister. Her rape and beating leaves her in a coma and pushes an already unstable Kebar over the edge just as Shea's dark secrets threaten boil over and into the streets of New York.
Once Were Cops melds the street poetry of Brooklyn and Dublin into a fast-paced, incomparable hard-boiled novel. This is Ken Bruen at his best.
Review:
"In this stripped-down dark thrill ride from Edgar-finalist Bruen (The Guards), a psychotic Irish cop, Matthew Patrick O'Shea ('everybody called me Shea'), blackmails his way into a green card and a police exchange program that takes him from Galway to New York City for a one-year stint with the NYPD. Partnered with the brutal Kurt 'Kebar' Browski ('he looked like a pit bull in uniform'), the clever sociopath, who has a hidden predilection for serial rape and strangulation, brazenly advances his ambitions despite intense attention from Internal Affairs and a mobster named Morronni. An acknowledged master of contemporary noir, Bruen touches all his usual themes in his trademark clipped postmodern style, a deft shorthand that enables him to romp at will through genre clichs to quickly reach deeper and more dangerous depths. No one is safe as this shocker spins wildly toward a violent finish." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
The prolific Irish novelist Ken Bruen's books are violent, vulgar, over the top, booze-soaked, dungeon-dark and — if you're not put off by all that — often hilarious. The first of his novels I read, "The Guards," featured a Galway private detective who did far more drinking than detecting. The next, "Calibre," starred a serial killer who targeted obnoxious people and soon had us cheering him on.... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) Bruen's new "Once Were Cops" is his most outrageous yet. Its narrator and antihero is an Irish psychopath who becomes a New York cop and moonlights as a serial killer. Michael Patrick O'Shea, known as Shea, grew up as a cop's son in Galway. His problems started when he would "zone out" as a child: "I'd go someplace in my mind, a cold place and it's like seeing the world through a fog or very heavy glass and what I most want is to do damage, biblical damage, it's beyond rage, more like a controlled fury that oh so careful watches, then strikes." Bruen gives us a semicomic portrait of the killer as a young man: "Hurling is our national sport, a cross between hockey and murder. I'd zone in games and some poor bastard would end up with forty stitches in his head." When young Shea tells his priest about his "zoning," the man warns, "Don't ever tell another soul about this, they'd lock you up." No such luck. Shea becomes a Galway policeman and, thanks to an exchange program, crosses the pond to join New York's finest. There he's partnered with rogue cop Kurt Browski, whose troubled past ("His father beat his mother and they both beat Kurt") left him as violent and crazy as Shea but not as cunning. Kurt is on the mob's payroll, and this leads to several lethal confrontations. Shea, meanwhile, is increasingly attracted to women whose white, swanlike necks bring out the worst in him. He yearns to meet a girl "who would so consume me that I wouldn't need the long slender necks of others." Those irresistible white necks too often end up strangled by Shea's weapon of choice, a string of rosary beads. (As a non-Catholic, I'm not going near that one.) Bruen faced a tricky question in writing this tale. How could he maintain even an iota of the reader's sympathy for a psycho who is leaving dead women all over New York? It helps that Shea is a charmer and an engaging narrator. He even manages, for a time, to carry on a romance with a perfectly nice young woman. And for much of the novel Bruen fuzzes up Shea's crime spree. The killings occur offstage, and Shea assures us he can't remember if he was the guilty party. Still, it becomes clear to any reader who is not himself a psychopath that our narrator is a monster who must be hastened to his eternal reward. By then, however, he's building a criminal empire within the NYPD. The big question is whether Shea is unstoppable — will he one day emerge as a law-and-order candidate for mayor? — or if he will somehow be brought down. To put it another way, will the author have the courage of his convictions or wimp out in the end? I'll never tell. To a degree, Bruen is offering the police point of view. He gives us cop's-eye glimpses of the world, like this one of Central Park: "You want to lose complete faith in the human race, troll the park for a few hours. We even came on a Frisbee thrower, nothing wrong there, save he'd lined the Frisbee with lead." In the real world, one cop declares, justice is dispensed in alleys, not in courtrooms. Another says, "If you police an armed society, you learn to shoot first or you're dead." That's chilling logic, but it helps explain why so many unarmed citizens are blown away each year by jittery officers of the law. Bruen flirts with an old question: Who polices the police? Many writers have shown us cops who are criminal or psychotic, but the assumption is generally that such men must be brought to justice. Bruen treats the question of police misconduct as a joke. He seems to be saying: I'm Irish, the world is mad — and who gives a damn? The novel is short and slapdash. It would be even shorter if Bruen had not written it in hundreds of one-sentence paragraphs. It has the feel of having been dashed off in a few weeks, but it possesses a blood-on-the-tracks fascination. You can accuse Bruen of various sins, but he has a distinct voice, and he's never less than readable. Put it this way: Last week I praised "The Glass of Time," Michael Cox's elegant portrait of love, luxury and crime in the Victorian era. "Once Were Cops" is designed to appeal to readers with less refined sensibilities. Reviewed by Patrick Anderson, whose e-mail address is mondaythrillers(at symbol)aol.com, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)
Review:
"Bruen, a master of modern noir, renders his prose in short staccato bursts, which is curiously mesmerizing — and, at the book's gruesome end, downright terrifying. (Grade: A–)" Entertainment Weekly
Review:
"Once Were Cops is an amazing book, full of twists and turns and genre-busting events....This is a work of brilliance, of nightmares, an instant classic that is sure to become a standard of noir fiction to which all others will be measured." BookReporter.com
Review:
"Shea is an otherworldly malevolence who makes Once Were Cops a chilling and deeply creepy read. That Bruen renders such a remarkable character in what might be called clipped free verse is further proof of his writing talent." Booklist
Review:
"The fare on offer at Chez Bruen features shards of spare sentences served up on lots of white space and presented with tons of attitude. Those who agree it's all in the presentation will be pleased, but those seeking meat and potatoes might be left wanting more." Library Journal
Review:
"An unlovely tale impossible to put down. Readers asked at year's end to list the nastiest, most violent cop novels of 2008 will certainly remember this one." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis:
Michael O'Shea is a member of Ireland's police force, known as The Guards. He's also a sociopath who walks a knife edge between sanity and all-out mayhem. Once Were Cops melds the street poetry of Brooklyn and Dublin into a fast-paced, incomparable hard-boiled novel.
Ken Bruen has been a finalist for the Edgar and Anthony Awards, and has won a Macavity Award, a Barry Award, and two Shamus Awards for the Jack Taylor series. He has been an English teacher in Africa, Japan, Southeast Asia, and South America. ;He lives in Galway, Ireland.
Larry Robinson, November 19, 2008 (view all comments by Larry Robinson)
Finally, the Bruen I love is back. After a couple of lackluster Jack Taylor books (lackluster for Bruen, but still good) we have a non-stop thrill ride that passes on all of the woe is me self-pity that has marked his most recent work. This time the bulk of the action takes place in NYC as an Irish Guard member is transferred to the NYPD in an exchange program. Never mind that the guy with the badge and the gun is a bigger psycho than most of the criminals. Vintage Bruen.
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Product details
304 pages
St. Martin's Minotaur -
English9780312384401
Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"In this stripped-down dark thrill ride from Edgar-finalist Bruen (The Guards), a psychotic Irish cop, Matthew Patrick O'Shea ('everybody called me Shea'), blackmails his way into a green card and a police exchange program that takes him from Galway to New York City for a one-year stint with the NYPD. Partnered with the brutal Kurt 'Kebar' Browski ('he looked like a pit bull in uniform'), the clever sociopath, who has a hidden predilection for serial rape and strangulation, brazenly advances his ambitions despite intense attention from Internal Affairs and a mobster named Morronni. An acknowledged master of contemporary noir, Bruen touches all his usual themes in his trademark clipped postmodern style, a deft shorthand that enables him to romp at will through genre clichs to quickly reach deeper and more dangerous depths. No one is safe as this shocker spins wildly toward a violent finish." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Review"
by Entertainment Weekly,
"Bruen, a master of modern noir, renders his prose in short staccato bursts, which is curiously mesmerizing — and, at the book's gruesome end, downright terrifying. (Grade: A–)"
"Review"
by BookReporter.com,
"Once Were Cops is an amazing book, full of twists and turns and genre-busting events....This is a work of brilliance, of nightmares, an instant classic that is sure to become a standard of noir fiction to which all others will be measured."
"Review"
by Booklist,
"Shea is an otherworldly malevolence who makes Once Were Cops a chilling and deeply creepy read. That Bruen renders such a remarkable character in what might be called clipped free verse is further proof of his writing talent."
"Review"
by Library Journal,
"The fare on offer at Chez Bruen features shards of spare sentences served up on lots of white space and presented with tons of attitude. Those who agree it's all in the presentation will be pleased, but those seeking meat and potatoes might be left wanting more."
"Review"
by Kirkus Reviews,
"An unlovely tale impossible to put down. Readers asked at year's end to list the nastiest, most violent cop novels of 2008 will certainly remember this one."
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
Michael O'Shea is a member of Ireland's police force, known as The Guards. He's also a sociopath who walks a knife edge between sanity and all-out mayhem. Once Were Cops melds the street poetry of Brooklyn and Dublin into a fast-paced, incomparable hard-boiled novel.
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