Review:
AMMUNITION by Ken Bruen
Review by Sandra Ruttan
If Ken Bruen’s bad-boy cop Sergeant Brant had opted for a life as a career criminal he wouldn’t have been content to rule Croydon or even London, or move to the US and take over the Boston Mob. He would have been running the crime organizations nation wide.
Brant certainly has the brains for it. Returning to his early days, in THE WHITE TRILOGY, readers discover an unlikely collection of dysfunctional characters all sworn to serve and protect, with a scuzzy playboy named Brant at the center of the action. Brant may not have been their leader in terms of rank, but his reputation earns him a grudging respect. Every wannabe who tries taking the law into their own hands and solving their own problems ends up knocking on Brant’s door and making a deal with the devil to save their skin…
Or eating their gun.
This is probably one of the most compelling aspects of Bruen’s Brant books. Forget your duty-bound British cops, working the case night and day to bring criminals to justice. In the seventh Brant book, AMMUNITION, Brant has been shot. Some cops go to the hospital grudgingly to see how he is, his ex-wife tells them to call her when he’s dead, and the only people who really seem to give a damn about him are the hookers solemnly waiting for word of his condition.
This is a series that’s gotten stronger book to book. Bruen wastes no time with pretense, taking us straight to the heart of the story, letting the words and actions of the characters speak for themselves. While the writing is called by most spare it would be better to say Bruen’s words have the precision of a scalpel. Far too many authors mistake volume for detail, and waste a lot of words never saying what Bruen can nail in a single sentence. He’s taken the lesson of writing short stories – that every single word must count –applied it to writing novels, and the result is stories that pull you into them and refuse to let you go until you’ve finished the last page.
Somehow, Bruen also manages to pull off the difficult task of having an ensemble cast that never feels too large, weaves several storylines together in a way that seems effortless, and makes his lead a character who is completely unlikable, and yet somehow endearing. Only Brant can steal from his colleagues and make them feel guilty for being upset with him. He’s like an addiction. You know he’s deadly and that too much exposure isn’t good for you, but you can’t seem to help yourself.
After reading the latest offering in the series, I feel part of Brant’s appeal is the completely honesty of his character. While other characters in other books (and even some in this series) try to pass themselves off as having integrity, loyalty, a sense of duty or honour, many eventually come face to face with temptation, make a wrong decision and then live with regret or have to answer for it. Brant never really has to face a moment of doubt about his choices. He makes no apologies for who and what he is, and that’s why he succeeds where others fail. He’s prepared to do whatever it takes to protect himself and his interests…
But is he prepared to murder someone, in cold blood, after the person tries to kill him?
Fans of the series will know the answer, but still find AMMUNITION to have plenty of twists in it to keep them guessing to the end. Bruen has done what all great series authors do – picked up loose ends left from previous books and wrapped up some of those storylines, and thrown in some real surprises. In my opinion, the Brant books are where Bruen has really cut his teeth. Because this was his first series, it’s possible to see his evolution as a writer in a different way from the standalones. Bruen’s style and skill has been sharpened and polished book to book, to the point where it comes off effortlessly. While so many authors flounder after an initial promising book, Bruen starts off strong, and yet still manages to get better and better, and continues to raise the bar for the rest of us.
About the Reviewer:
Sandra Ruttan's novel, WHAT BURNS WITHIN, will be released by Dorchester in May 2008, to be followed by THE FRAILTY OF FLESH November 2008. Ken Bruen declared her work "totally mesmerizing" while Clive Cussler concluded, "Ruttan has a spellbinding style." She is also an editor with Spinetingler Magazine. For more information, visit her website at www.sandraruttan.com