A serial killer is picking off members of the England cricket team, and in the dark and violent world of Brixton a vigilante group is hanging dope dealers from lamp-posts. Both Roberts and Brant are in hot water with their chief and they need something big to get them out of it. They desperately need a "white arrest, " a major catch to whitewash all their past sins and deliver them, if not to paradise, at least to a better beat. Paced with black humor and a soundtrack of violence and intolerance, A White Arrest is a police procedural unlike any other.
Also available as part of The White Trilogy:
Hip, violent and funny vignettes of the mean streets of southeast London tie together this rowdy set of short novels by Bruen (The Guards), a modern Irish master of the hard-boiled.
Collecting A White Arrest (1998), Taming the Alien (1999) and The McDead (2000) for first U.S. publication, this omnibus showcases the investigations of the aging Chief Inspector Roberts and the brutish Detective Sergeant Brant, with the assistance of the unlucky-in-love Woman Police Constable Falls. They don't always solve their assigned crimes, but know perfectly well if they can nail the occasional major criminal-"the white arrest"-they'll be able to keep their jobs. Among numerous subplots, they pursue a serial killer stalking England's winning soccer team, a vigilante gang hanging drug dealers and a hit man known as "The Alien" because he whacked a victim engrossed in the video of that movie with a baseball bat just as the monster pops out of John Hurt's chest. But quieter moments, such as Brant's visit to his home county in Ireland, are just as interesting.