THE MCDEAD

Bruen closes out his White Trilogy (A White Arrest, not reviewed; Taming the Alien, 2000) by dumping just about every tough-cop cliché you can think of into a single mixing bowl and hitting purée. There’s Chief Insp. James Roberts’s pursuit of Tommy Logan, the ganglord who beat his brother to death. There’s Falls’s brave agreement to serve as bait for the Clapham Rapist (six assaults and counting). There’s Falls’s friend Rosie’s mistake in getting up-close-and-personal with a heroin addict with AIDS, Det. Sgt. Tom Brant’s distress call from his ex-wife, up-and-coming Constable McDonald’s pursuit of anything in a skirt, and everywhere you look the heavy hand of the Super. But none of these obligatory plotlines goes even remotely as you’d expect. Instead, under cover of nonstop crime, music, and infighting among his coppers, Bruen ties off developing complications as ruthlessly as a field hospital’s amputations, then pumps in fresh blood—a new sergeant who just happens to be gay, a possible romantic partner for Brant—as casually as if he had an endless supply. When you stand back from the whole tapestry of comic horror, you can see all South London sliding toward the abyss marked by his mordant title; when you stand up close, you can hardly hear yourself think.

Somewhere between the refreshing irreverence of Bill James and the inky blackness of a coal cellar at midnight.