Vixen
A Novel
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4.3 • 9 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Inspector Brant is back is back in the fifth novel in Ken Bruen's London-based cop series, Vixen.
For the Southeast London police squad, it's rough, tough, dirty business as usual. The Vixen, the most sensuous, crazed female serial killer ever, is masterminding a series of lethal explosions. She is unpredictable, wild, angry--and the cops don't even know she exists.
Meanwhile, Inspector Roberts is helpless to stop the explosions and his subordinates aren't doing much better. Brant is consumed with an even-bigger-than-usual mean streak, and fast-rising Porter Nash finds himself facing serious health problems--everything to do with needles. PC MacDonald is determined to soldier on, whatever the cost, and the career of a new addition to the squad, WPC Andrews, starts spectacularly but with Falls as her mentor she's not expected to last long. At the top, Superintendent Brown is close to a coronary, and arresting the wrong man in a blaze of publicity is only the beginning of his problems.
If the squad survives this incendiary installment in Ken Bruen's blazingly intense series, they'll do so with barely a cop left standing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This new installment in Shamus-winner Bruen's Southeast London police squad thriller series-the little brother to the author's Jack Taylor mysteries-reunites the reader with the incorrigible Inspector Brant, Sergeant Doyle, Police Constable Falls and other old friends. This time Brant and cohorts must investigate a series of deadly extortion bombings masterminded by Angie James, aka "the Vixen." A female psychopath, James coldly manipulates men and women like human pawns to make her plan succeed. Bruen provides the usual grace notes, including quotes from other mystery novels, pithy dialogue and hyper-real violence. James as a malevolent force of nature adds needed energy to the narrative, while new characters like Falls's partner, Patricia Andrews, supply a few fresh faces on the police side. Brant's now trademark nefarious activities make for wickedly funny reading. The best scene in the novel might be when Brant leads Chief Inspector Roberts to a prostitutes' party and gets him drunk. However, overall, the novel seems curiously muted in effect compared to past efforts (Blitz, etc.). Bruen uncharacteristically slows his scenes with explanations, while the central mystery surrounding the Vixen is pedestrian.
