London Boulevard / by Ken Bruen

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Just out on parole after a three year stint in lockup, Mitchell (surname not given) once again resumes roaming the city streets, running amok with his hardscrabble lot of friends and petty criminals, shacking up in a dilapidated apartment with his favorite Irish call girl, his life resuming its playful but deviant pattern. But after an old friend uses him in a job in a loan sharking operation, Mitchell is soon involved in another assault, a brawl which gets the better of him and gets him thinking that his current lifestyle isn't working out. Deciding to pursue a more wholesome line of work, he takes a job as a live-in handyman for an old, once-famous movie actress named Lillian Palmer living alone in a creepy, steadily dilapidating manor house.
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Mitchell's cushy new situation seems to be a great gig--good pay, clean place to sleep, nice clothes and fancy cars to drive around. But trouble seems bound to find Mitchell even if he's not actually looking for it. His old cronies from the syndicate have it in for him after a deal gone wrong and his crazy sister Bri keeps getting into her own messes and needing Mitchell to bail her out. Even when he finds what he thinks could be his soulmate--Aisling, a former call girl--Mitchell never can seem to escape the violent world of his past or the threatening loan sharks, druggies, and other bottomfeeders who only spell doom for his present and future. When a critical mistake threatens everything that's dear to Mitchell, he plots his own ghastly form of revenge on those who've made it their mission to ruin his life.
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Irish mystery author Bruen combines hard-edged, intimidating yet intricate elements of the London underworld, its unmistakeable gritty and predatory landscape, with easily accessible prose. As a mystery, the book is a solid standalone story, effectively weaving a clever mix of characters and details which prolong the suspense and intrigue until an epic climax. Though the principle figures including Mitchell aren't particularly admirable or even marginally sympathetic--they're not supposed to be--they resonate a perfect quality which most readers of crime fiction will immediately recognize as necessary element for successful storytelling within the genre. The title London Boulevard is a reference to the 1951 film noir classic Sunset Boulevard in which William Holden's character becomes the caretaker/lodger at the home of a faded movie star.