Ken Bruen: Taming the Alien (USA 2012)

From the Publisher:
Cops Roberts and Brant come back swinging in book two of the "hip, violent and funny" crime novel trilogy set on "the mean streets of southeast London" (Publishers Weekly).

South London's Chief Inspector Roberts and his partner, the reckless and thuggish Irish Detective Sergeant Brant, are at odds with who has it worse: Roberts, with a mortgage in Dulwich, a pregnant daughter in boarding school, and a dire medical diagnosis; or Brant, relegated to desk duty after getting knifed in the back, and living to see his complete Ed McBain collection destroyed by a psycho with a baseball bat. That particular nut job has been dubbed the Alien, a hit man so named for carrying out a skull-smashing job while watching Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic, and hanging around in the spatter to finish the film.

But this time the carnage isn't confined to southeast London. As Brant heads to New York by way of Dublin to catch the couple who knifed him and the Alien goes to San Francisco to pay a surprise visit to his former girlfriend, Bruen's broad, brutal canvas once again shows why he's been hailed as one of "the most original and innovative noir voices of the last two decades" (Los Angeles Times Book Review).

Ken Bruen: Taming the Alien. Book two of the White Trilogy. MysteriousPress.com /Open Road Media, ISBN: 9781453289006 (December, 2012), eBook, 2 MB (ca. 156 p.), $9.99.

Ken Bruen: Taming the Alien (UK 1999)

From the Publisher:
Taming the Alien is the second book in a planned trilogy. It is just as populated by the lowlifes, wideboys, and old fashioned villains of south-east London that are found in the first novel, A White Arrest. Detective Sergeant Brant and his boss, Inspector Roberts, of the Metropolitan Police are as sleazy and ruthless as the villains they are out to get. Taming the Alien takes us on an unforgettable crawl through the mean streets of London, Dublin, and New York. Ken Bruen's trademarks are his wickedly dark sense of humor, punchy dialogue, and characters that are as real as toothaches. Here they are all present in spades.

Ken Bruen: Taming the Alien. Do-Not Press, ISBN: 1899344497 (October, 1999), 158 p., £7.99.