Rilke On Black

Borrowing from the slick sparse noir styles of James Cain and Jim Thompson this book traces the union of three miscreants-a bouncer, his psychotic friend and his hooker girlfriend- through the kidnapping of a club owner who reads Rilke. What happens when a very unstable multi agenda group work together? Twists, turns, violence, and that unmistakeable Bruen black humor. Give yourself a fast read and a quick trip down Bruen Lane.

Quirky characters with dialog that'll have you believing you're living in their world. But you'll be glad you're not (or, at least, I certainly hope not). This is a written word version of all those horrific youtube videos where some guy (it's always a guy) races his bike/car/sled straight into a wall... and then does it again! Some people just like to live on the edge of the razor blade. Ken Bruen's characters in this book certainly do. You'll see where they're heading, you'll want to look away, but just like with the youtube videos, you won't be able to. And you'll be glad you didn't.

Raymond CHandler once said to an editor that cut a description, claiming that the reader didn't care about that sort of thing, that he was wrong. Atmosphere, observation and feeling were ALL the reader cared about. They just didn't know it. Which is something to keep in mind about Ken Bruen. Once in a while his plots can feel contrived (and sometimes they are great) but his sense of atmosphere - whether in London or Galway, always among hard men and tough women - never waivers. Rilke on Black is far superior to the similar Her Last Call to Louis McNiece. All Bruen's strengths are on display here. Characters are drawn effortless, with just a few strokes, and feel true to life. It's great to see Inspector Brandt show up late in the novel, too. He's not yet the full blown creation that is Bruen's best achievement, but this book is a great sign of the things to come.

I picked up Rilke on Black in a remainder lot somewhere and read it months later on a whim. For it's faults, this is a first novel of tremendous intensity by a writer whose works I now intend to hunt down. It's certainly energised me to track him and end up dashing this off.Stylistically, Bruen throws so many punches so rapidly in this first novel that it's hard to track down influences. Certainly he's read and studied the classics, from Hammett to Ross Macdonald. For California, tho, substitute working class London. And the story is told by a guy Lew Archer didn't get to when he was a troubled adolescent.Having mentioned faults, I should say that the rythmn of this book seems a bit off to me at times. The sheer impact of the narrative, however, tends to obscure the problem.I've come away feeling Bruin's peers are more along the lines of Lou Reed and Iggy Pop than any literary school, and this is certainly no slur. Rilke on Black is a short slam dance of a book that casts a rather long shadow, a small canvas with details that emerge long after you've finished the book.Certainly this isn't mass market stuff. If you appreciate precise, focused prose in a deceptively tight plot with disturbing undertones left and right, however, give Rilke on Black a shot. I feel this is something of a find.