Read The White Trilogy: A White Arrest, Taming the Alien, The McDead Online

Authors: Ken Bruen

The White Trilogy: A White Arrest, Taming the Alien, The McDead

A White Trilogy
Ken Bruen

Introduction

Brant

and

the

Blurring

Bravado

We will not now

Or ever

Help you in any form fashion or method

In research

Regarding the Metropolitan Police.

So said Scotland Yard when I asked them for assistance regarding:

Pay scales

Ranks

Jargon

For a planned series on London coppers.

Right,

I thought.

Fuck that.

And wrote the first one:

A White Arrest.

Inventing that term to mean a stunning arrest that would whitewash all previous screw-ups.

I wanted a bad-ass bigoted blunt violent sergeant as the focus, with a surrounding cast of dysfunctional cops in an imagined South East London station, close to where I’d lived for ten years.

Arrogance,

I was told.

And, too, stupidity, for an Irish writer to tackle the London Met.

More fuel to me blaze.

So Brant was born, a maverick of Irish heritage and his own twisted moral code. His motto, screw ’em all:

Hookers

Colleagues

Cops

Journalists

And anyone else who crossed his path.

He used a hurley and a violent demeanor to shock, shake, and pulverize all and sundry. His immediate superior, Chief Inspector Roberts, was a foil to this thug, a decent man forced to stoop to Brant’s methods on many occasions and yet they had a weird and fucked alliance.

PC Falls, a black female from Brixton, was………. the wet dream of the nick………. destined to be prone to:

Coke

Useless men

And the Vixen.

A changing mix of snitches would act as chorus before they succumbed to terrible fates due to Brant’s feckless concern. Through the series, Brant would have one enduring love and idol: Ed McBain, all the novels of the 87th Precinct in the original Penguin Green editions.

It was a unique privilege and grace for me to read with Ed McBain at the Black Orchid Bookshop and talk about………….. Brant!

The movie of Brant,
Blitz
, starring Jason Statham, Paddy Considine, and Aiden Gillen, was enhanced by the opportunity to play an Irish priest.

They opened the movie with Brant and a hurley, to great humorous effect.

An unlikely friend of Brant’s is Porter Nash, named after a pharmacy on the Walworth Road. Openly gay, he was exposed to all of Brant’s rampant bigotry, but they formed a formidable team.

Writing Brant was a blast, just an absolute joy, and if all writing were as much fun and fulfilling, I’d be turning out a book a week.

The White Trilogy
contains all that is essential to the whole series, and even now, in writers’ hindsight and suspicion, doubt and insecurity, I’d write it exactly the same.

Ken Bruen

Galway, Ireland

November 2012

Contents

Introduction

A White Arrest

‘a blue collar soul’

‘He who hits first gets promoted’

‘Homicide dicks’

‘You can’t just go round killing people, whenever the notion strikes you. It’s not feasible.’

‘Setting a Tone’

‘The King of thieves has come, call it stealing if you will but I say, it’s justice done. You have had your way, The Ragged Army’s calling time.’