Book Review – Dispatching Baudelaire

Author: Ken Bruen
Publisher: Sitric Books
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: 2004

Throughout his life accountant Mike Shaw has played it safe, kept his head down, and avoided risk. His girlfriend, Brenda, is a secretary and their idea of a night on the town is to visit the local pizza parlor. But when Mike meets Laura in a bar off The Strand, their lives are irrevocably changed.

Small, sexy, smart – and utterly dangerous – Laura instantly spell bounds Mike and leads him into a world of moral depravity, dominated by the sinister presence of her powerful and rich father, Harold Benton. Dressed in safari suits, dining in the West End restaurants, Benton drinks only the best of wines and whiskies, imitates Richard Burton, and quotes French poet Baudelaire at every opportunity. He is also without conscience, on a hell-bent mission to mould others into his likeness.

Dispatching Baudelaire is different from Bruens other standalone books in that it deals with a protagonist who lives a successful, mundane, middle-class existence by normal societal standards. So, in other words, not a criminal. With the introduction of a catalyst element Shaws whole life changes. One of the basic narrative questions asked here is ‘how far can this guy be pushed and how will he react’? Well it’s a Bruen book so no one will be safe, the action and the ending will be unexpected.

Dispatching Baudelaire is in some ways a companion book to The Hackman Blues. First they both pursue themes of sexuality. In Dispatching Baudelaire what can only be described as a series of sexual time bombs is released in the lives of these characters and the effects of which are near catastrophic, producing changes that are unexpected and hard-hitting to the reader. All of this peaks in a crazed, hedonistic party. The only comparable game of sexual politics played in a book of recent memory is Mr. Rhyno Clactons Offer by Russell Hoban. The second is the exploration of life in London in the aftermath of Thatcherism and the reaction against those policies. In this case though its the beneficiaries of said policies that are put through the ringer.

All of Bruen’s standalones of this time frame share a number of characteristics and qualities. The characters from one group of books could just as easily thrive if suddenly dropped into another of the stories, they are all from the same dysfunctional family and some of them are even kissing cousins.

Dispatching Baudelaire isn’t the best place to stare reading the books of Ken Bruen for the first time. It’s a very good just not the best introduction. So lets recommend this one for those readers who might be caught up on Jack and demising the so called “completion” of Brant and are looking for something Ken Bruen to read.

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