Dark City Blue

Tom Bishop #1

by Luke Preston

If there’s one thing worse than a crooked cop on your heels then it’s a whole unit of them.

A fistful of people are murdered, fifteen million dollars is stolen and detective Tom Bishop is stuck in the middle. When he hits the street, every clue points in the same direction – his colleagues in a police department demoralised by cutbacks and scandals. Hunted, alone and with no place left to turn, Bishop embarks on a hellish journey down into the gutters where right and wrong quickly become twisted and problems are solved with gunfire and bloodshed.

Over the next two days, Tom Bishop will be cornered. He will be beaten. He will bust into prison. He will shoot at police. He will team up with violent criminals. He will become one of them. He will break every rule in the book, chasing a lead nobody else will go near down a rabbit hole of corruption, murder and buried secrets.

Will Bishop become the very monster he set out to destroy?

A modern hard-boiled tale that unfolds at a relentless pace, Dark City Blue is Serpico, if Serpico snorted a fistful of cocaine and hung out with Lee Marvin.

“Dark City Blue is a freight train of a thriller crashing through some madhouse city night while a bomb’s ticking down to zero. It’s the cage fighting equivalent of a police procedural: violent, gaudy, and packing heat.” – Trent Jamieson, author of the Death Works trilogy

Genres: Crime

224 pages, ebook

First published November 1, 2012

About the author

Luke spent most of his twenties as a freelance writer, a private investigator and listening to rock ‘n roll. He drinks heavily on occasion, is a half decent musician and his idea of a good time involves a jukebox designed to bleed ears.

Luke’s work has been recognised by The Inside Film Awards, MTV and The ATOM Awards. He writes in cafes, bars and in parking lots on the back of old fuel receipts and cigarette packets. He doesn’t believe in writers block or in the magic bullet theory and his favourite album is Exile on Main Street.

Luke’s writing is as much influenced by AC/DC and Johnny Cash as it is by Richard Stark and Raymond Chandler. He is undertaking a Master of Screenwriting at the Victorian College of the Arts and has absolutely no intention of moving to a shack in the middle of nowhere. He likes bad traffic, noisy neighbours, cheap beer, loud bars and has been occasionally known to howl at the moon.

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Justice’ is more an idea than concept or purpose for policing. It’s a universal term coined to facilitate the dispensing of action through lawful conduct on those who are in breach of maintaining public order. DARK CITY BLUE squashes the safety blanket-like public and policing perception by using this as a means of defining a central corrupt body of lawmakers and turning them into first class criminals. Protagonist, Bishop, a hard-man who’s shed more blood than tears is an honest cop in a world where disloyalty is rewarded. Not the type to turn a blind eye, he embarks on a one man mission to bring down a deeply entrenched seed of criminal activity right in the backyard of the boys in the blue.

Preston wastes no time in thrusting the reader face first into the action. From the opening scene Bishop is confronted with the underage sex trade, shotguns, and dead bodies. The high octane, noir on no-doze feel to DARK CITY BLUE doesn’t let up with Bishop piecing the broken bits of a blood encrusted puzzle one shard at a time over the course of a number of violent encounters with the law and lawless alike.

Bishop’s motive is fuelled by rage, derived through the clouded eyes of a dying, abused child, in Chloe. A captive against her will serving as no more than a means to fatten the pockets of the elusive entity known as ‘Justice’. As the body bag is zipped up, darkening the youthful body within, so does Bishops mood and determination. Throughout the course of the novel, moments exist where Bishop could walk, turn to IA, or act alone as a vigilante – luckily for the reader; he decides to go at it alone. Following the deathly whispers of ‘Justice’, Bishop learns of police involvement in a heist worth 15mil and other heinous crimes that threaten to tear apart the already thin fabric that holds the police department together.

Fellow officers, judges, commanders, criminals, snitches, undercover agents, and best friends all come scrutiny as Bishop kicks tail and takes names on the path to the truth. DARK CITY BLUE is delivered in a frenetic pace, while this had the potential to overshadow the novels protagonist, Preston still manages to establish a deep and painful back-story amongst the bullets and blood. It’s easy to see how Bishop can evolve into a serious series character. One can’t help but think the complexity of his character unearthed in DARK CITY BLUE is but the tip of the iceberg.

This is one shot of oz noir adrenaline not to be missed - 4 stars.

[S.B. Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark City Blue is a fast paced crime thriller published by Momentum, the digital offspring of PanMacmillan.

What can I say about Dark City Blue that others haven’t said already?

"It’s the cage fighting equivalent of a police procedural: violent, gaudy, and packing heat.” – Trent Jamieson, author of the Death Works trilogy

” … noir on No-Doz … ” – Fair Dinkum Crime

To tell you the truth it was Trent Jamieson’s quote that hooked me. I trust his taste and Dark City Blue didn’t disappoint. The idea – maverick cop goes undercover to expose graft and corruption in the police force, is not new. Indeed were this set in America I think you’d already have cast Bruce Willis for the lead.

It’s mature stuff, breaking a ring of child abusing pornographers and unearthing the police presence in the running of teen brothels. The violence is bloody – the main character gets beaten with a bag of crushed glass and shot. But there’s also heart and depth to our main character Tom Bishop, a man whose still keeping his head above water, despite what life has thrown at him.

It’s more Jack Irish, than Underbelly: The Unwatchable.

Where Preston shines is in his ability to pull off a tale that is set in Australia while staying true to the hard boiled, thriller paced genre that has its genesis in American pop culture. Dark City Blue feels very comfortable in its own bruised and bloodied skin.

Now, while I believe Dark City Blue to be Preston’s first published novel, he’s also received an inside film award for an unpublished screenplay. The writing is tight, and the pacing superb and I can’t help wondering if the skills he’s developed in scriptwriting have bled over into writing a well structured novel.

Sometimes you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, you just need to produce one of quality. I’d easily drop dollars on the sequel.

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detective Tom Bishop was a hard nut to crack! Growing up, his teenage years were filled with all the things you hope your kids never get into. But orphanages and foster homes have to be the right type or the worst will happen. When a cop by the name of Pat Wilson came to his rescue, took him into his home and taught him right from wrong, good from bad and guided him into the police force, Tom’s life changed. But he still had a darkness inside him – and when someone was wronged, his violence unleashed itself…

The day the armoured van was ambushed, guards and innocent witnesses murdered and fifteen million dollars was stolen was the day Tom Bishop’s life changed forever. Surrounded by corrupt cops, cops on the take and cops ruled by an elusive entity called Justice, Tom was determined to work his way through the department until he had weeded them all out. But he was alone with no-one to trust, and everyone was out to get him. He had nowhere to turn, and with murder, violence and bloodshed his constant companions his life wasn’t worth much at all.

This debut novel by Luke Preston was incredibly gritty, violent and brutal. The streets of the city will never be the same after Detective Tom Bishop has finished with them! Bloody, with profanities which were endless and heartbreak which was real, Dark City Blue is a deep, dark noir thriller. For those of you who love full on action, this is the novel for you!

[David Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished Dark City Blue by Luke Preston. I met a cop who is harder to kill than Steven Seagal, with one liners to make Clint Eastwood jealous and saw enough shooting and action to shame Bruce Willis.

This was an adrenaline packed page turner, and I can't wait for the release of his new book, Out of Exile.

Thank-you Greg (Greg Barron, author of Rotten Gods and Savage Tide) for putting me on to this emerging talent. Another thriller writer for me to follow!

[Raven · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gripping slice of Aussie noir from debut author Luke Preston, that will have you hooked from the first page. Violent and action-packed, the pace is as swift as the writing is sparse, in a true homage to the hardboiled crime tradition, and the short snappy chapters carry you quickly through this tale of police corruption, paedophiles, and armed robbery. Tom Bishop, our erstwhile hero, is a cop on a mission seeking to expose a very dark conspiracy involving his fellow police officers who are as a bent as a boomerang and ever so nasty with it. Bishop is an old school cop, who has little time for official procedures and a very flexible attitude to extigent circumstances, regularly bowling in where others fear to tread and dispensing with bad guys left, right and centre. He gets the job done and is largely left to his own devices by his senior officers until he starts treading on the wrong toes, as he starts to uncover and investigate the pernicious actions of a corrupt group of police colleagues, or ‘Justice’, as they are known, leading to some very hairy moments for Bishop. Shot at, beaten, locked up and generally physically abused, Bishop, and those closest to him, cannot escape the wrath of ‘Justice’ and it soon becomes clear that there are few people that Bishop can trust, giving rise to a suspicion of everybody a very bloody trail of bodies along the way.

This book runs on pure adrenaline as the pacing is exceptionally fast, and I would definitely concur with other reviewers that once you’re hooked in, it is tremendously difficult to put down. The action sequences are deftly realised and genuinely edge of the seat, as very much in the manner of cinema action thrillers, there is a brilliant sense of each bloody shoot-out being maybe one too far for our cop hero and will he really make it to the end of the book? Aha..that would be telling! In terms of characterisation, Bishop is one of those guys that has you rooting for him from the start, having a good moral compass despite his own tough upbringing. He experiences a genuine sense of wounded pride that his fellow officers can act in such a despicable manner, fethering their own nests, and displaying dishonour to the credo of protect and serve. There is a nicely emotive side story involving him and his newly discovered teenage daughter, Alice, which also impacts on his single minded determination to avenge the death of another teenage girl, forced into sexual slavery. He’s a genuine tough guy with a slightly melty centre, and definitely not a man to be trifled with as many find out to their cost throughout the course of the book.

So to sum up, a nifty little debut with a good central storyline, a natty use of dialogue, an engaging protagonist and more than enough action to keep those pages a-turning. Would thoroughly recommend this blood and bullets debut if you think you’re hard enough to handle it…

[Greg Barron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tom Bishop grew up in the cab of a truck, on the run with his dad, who was wanted by the cops for killing his wife, Tom’s mother, “with the butt of a longneck.” Tom ended up in an orphanage, and never knew when to stop throwing punches. Cop, Patrick Wilson, who had lost his own son from leukaemia, adopted him, and guided young Tom into the police force.

Dark City Blue is the story of Bishop’s one man war against a corrupt gang of major crime squad boys, a paedophile/snuff ring headed up by someone who should know better, and crooks everywhere. In the process he gets shot, glassed, bashed and battered. It has some great supporting characters: Wilson, Alice, Ellison, and antagonists: Rayburn and the Franks boys were standouts.

I read this book from cover to cover in less than twenty four hours, and when I wasn’t reading it I was thinking about it. It moves fast. Sometimes too fast, and I was left grappling for something to anchor me to the story. It gave me that same feeling as watching the first Underbelly series—that slightly sick feeling but can’t turn your eyes away. It is violent, and the body count rises dramatically as the story goes on.

I highly recommend this book, it’s a fantastic read with interesting things to say on corruption, violence, and the seedier side of the world that some of us are born into.

[James Winduss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grows on you. By the end it feels as strong as any hard-boiled novel you'd pick up off a mainstream crime shelf

[Speesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, two days in the company of policeman Detective Tom Bishop. Not the most pleasant of experiences for him - but a fast-paced, tense, amoral, dark and gritty, ultimately thrilling roller-coaster ride for us.

The story is based in and around Bishop's Police Station in...well, we aren't told, as far as I can see. It's a violent, no-name city that could be many places (just hope it isn't near you or me). Perhaps Luke Preston deliberately doesn't say where it IS set, so that we can think 'this could be near me!' If he named the city, we could easier hold it at arm's length by telling ourselves 'Sheesh! They've got it bad there, thank goodness it isn't near me!' But by not defining it, it COULD be near you or me. Helps the story hit home.

Tom Bishop is a cop not just on the edge - but over it and half way down the other side looking up. He is a tough as nails, old school cop on the inside. A tough as nails, shoot first and 'Questions? The fuck are they?' afterwards, on the outside. And he's the good guy. Indeed, often the only way to tell the difference between him and the criminals he's mixed up with, is the Police badge he's carrying. And even then you're not sure.

After a violent robbery goes down, that he's just too late on the scene to prevent, it becomes clear that not just has 15 million Dollars gone missing, but that the perpetrators are more than likely Policeman. His colleagues. He knows them. But perhaps more worryingly; they know he knows. What to do? Join them? Try and beat them? Joining them would be the easy way out. But luckily for us, that's not Bishop's style.

As the story develops, friends turn to enemies and in the pursuit of the truth - and something that might resemble justice - a whole lot of moral lines get blurred almost to invisibility. Nothing matters to Bishop but stopping the corrupt Police officers. From getting to the evidence and the witnesses of course. But mostly from stopping them getting to him! His colleagues have been so corrupt, so long, that he, Bishop, seems like the one in the wrong.

Dark City Blue is a (not so) pretty, tough, no-nonsense kind of a story. About a tough, no-nonsense kind of a character. So the writing style mirrors this. Clipped, hard and effective. Never uses three words where two will have more punch.

"She looked at the crumpled bill as if it had just taken a shit on the rug. 'You pigs are all the same.'"

What's not to like? In the Acknowledgements - you do read Acknowledgements, don't you? - I thought it was perhaps confirmation of this mirroring, that Luke Preston writes thanks to "Gareth Beal: My editor, who killed all the words that didn't matter." Every word matters here, there's no room for passengers, word-wise. It is a style that perhaps sometimes needs getting accustomed to. But when you've read a few pages, you get a lot out of it. And I felt that as the novel progresses and we learn more about Bishop and his life, the story and prose became a little warmer, more nuanced. Again, just like the character of Bishop develops. Both still retaining all the original shoot-to-kill attitude of course. I find it is a style where you - or your own mind and powers of association - do almost as much work as the author does in the writing.

It is a provocative way of telling the/a story, but then it is a provocative story. Nihilistic even. Like Bishop. In many ways the book reminded me of another of my favourite authors; Mark Timlin. And that's a (very) good thing. His 'Nick Sharman' stories also explore the life and hard times of a(n ex-) Policeman. One who'd not exactly seen better times, but certainly times better than the, erm... 'problematical' ones the stories had him set in.

Like I say, despite the tale being told like it's got a gun to its head, I do detect a little compassion hidden under all Bishop's scar tissue. Compassion might be a weakness in his world, but he does almost develop a conscience, of sorts. Perhaps, beneath all the grime and under all the cuts and scars, bullets and bruises, there does lurk an idealistic policeman. Is this why he chooses to keep going? Why he chooses not to take the money and the easy - less painful - way out. Even if that is the hard choice. If nothing else, Dark City Blue is about Bishop's choices. Between doing right by your colleagues, and doing right in the 'wrong' way. Choosing how far to go wrong, to do the right thing. I think ultimately, the key to Bishop's character, why he chooses to do what he does, might lie with his daughter. Them finding each other and Bishop maybe wanting to prove to her he wasn't such a bad father-figure to have found after all.

Actually, I read Dark City Blue on my iPhone Kindle app and I did think that at the end of this book there should perhaps be a sign 'now wash your hands.' I cleaned the screen of my iPhone, just in case.

It is an unsettling story, if reality is really like this. But compulsive because of it. And a lot of fun.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes you just have to start off a book review with a bunch of warnings - so let's get the public service announcements out of the road now. Don't read DARK CITY BLUE if:

a) you're going to need sleep in the immediate future;
b) you're about to cough up the annual Christmas Policeman's Fund donation;
c) your tolerance for violence is more on the Midsummer end of the scale; or
d) you've got an allergy to adrenaline.

Ignore the warnings if you're looking for something that is action-packed, violent, sparse, and tense with a serious Australian sensibility. You're most definitely in the right territory.

The positives, are exactly the things right up the alley out the back of our place (okay so it's a gravel track but any analogy in a tight spot...). For a start, Preston is one of those authors who leave you pondering their relationship with their central character. Tom Bishop is a good-old fashioned honest cop, with no self-preservation instincts whatsoever. And apparently no pain receptors in his body and a stubbornly one-track mind. There's nothing particularly surprising about a hardboiled, noir sort of a cop that doesn't play nice with his superiors, and has a fractious relationship with his colleagues. What is interesting here is the level of corruption that Bishop starts kicking the covers from. It's pretty extreme - from armed robbery and sexual slavery to good old fashioned standover and more than a bit of general menacing and lurking. The idea that there is a high ranking officer controlling the network of corruption is very real, how high up this officer goes intriguing and what is really most of the mystery from the get go.

It's actually quite hard to tell who is on which side, and for how long for most of the book, and that, and the sheer lunacy of the action means that everything clips along at a tremendous pace. But it's not all hard, mad and bad. Bishop's tentative building of a relationship with his teenage daughter, until recently completely estranged from him, is a nice touch, giving the hard man a bit of a gooey core. It's also that relationship that provides some real moments of hope and sadness. There's also something disconcerting about aspects of the resolution that actually say quite a bit about motivation and why good people do bad things. I actually found that, in the middle of all of the mayhem, quite a thought provoker.

Whilst there is something vaguely cinematic about the action scenes in the book, it's not overdone or jarring, and DARK CITY BLUE mercifully doesn't read like a film script bashed into a book. In fact it reads like a hell of an action-packed, hard boiled, mean streets story, with a believable protagonist, tight and realistic dialogue and a plot that has a sobering credibility to it.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/revie...

[Leo Stableford · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd never really considered the possibility of there being a sub-genre called "hard boiled oz noir" before cracking open Dark City Blue. The first thing to note about this is that the Australian patois definitely delivers a unique wrinkle to a powerful, bloody, violent thriller.

Let's be clear about this, there is something joyously adolescent about the violence, the swearing, the cranked up adrenaline-soaked machismo of Dark City Blue. I think the jazzy mood title does little to convey the swaggering minimalist confidence of this assured slice of sardonic action.

The story revolves around your classic hard man super cop Tom Bishop hunting, and being hunted by, a network of corrupt cops in Victoria. The novel wastes no time kicking off with a gun battle, proceeding through an armed robbery, into a balls to the wall action chase where Preston takes every opportunity to beat the crap out of Bishop in a most satisfying manner.

The language is terse and revels in its punchy economy. There's exactly enough story to keep the whole thing barrelling forward, not so much you ever find yourself confused. Dark City Blue is an assured exercise in literary economy. It's the closest thing to a great tits and explosions action movie I've ever read in novel form. The whole thing's a gestalt, no individual element is unusually strong but the whole thing pulls together to make a terrific début novel and I wait with eager anticipation to read the next Tom Bishop novel.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book within 24 hours of downloading it. It's fast-paced, tightly written and extremely well-written book.

Preston has said on his website and in his blog that he's a fan of both Hammet and Stark, and his hero reminded me of a combination of the Continental Op and Parker. I don't know if it's because of the novel blurb or the actual character in the book, but I would totally cast Lee Marvin as Bishop in a movie version of this thing. Though I think Gene Hackman could play the part almost as well.

I liked that Bishop had some layers to him as well. Preston did a good job of showing us some slices of Bishop's life that harbored demons for him.

I could not put this book down and found myself avoiding my responsibilities and escaping into Dark City Blue until the end of the book.

[Trevor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fast paced and action packed police thriller. Tom Bishop has had a tough violent upbringing, he is now a detective in the VPD trying hard to control his inner demons. The one good cop trying to route out corruption at the highest level. A good book that moves at a good pace, Tom Bishop's life will never be the same, on a professional and personal level.

[Steve Vincent · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detective chases down dodgy cops and a fat load of cash in this hard boiled crime book by Luke Preston. Smashed through this in a few days, and enjoyed the precision and brevity of the writing. Also a buzz seeing some scenes set down the road from my house, as scary as that is. Recommended.

[Amanda Bridgeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read. A gritty, action-packed, cop tale that shoots from the hip!

[Sarah Macgregor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing!! A good, Australian cop thriller, with very relevant underlying social themes. Good fun to read.

[Leslie Willmouth · Rating 3 out of 5]

very violent

[L.E. Truscott · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like characters who never sleep and only ever pass out to get some rest, then this is the book for you.

This is a fast-paced story and the body count starts almost immediately and doesn't let up right until the very end. It has a very gritty feel and it is set in a bleak, dystopian version of Melbourne, Australia that as someone who lives there I don't recognise, thank goodness.

The plot is a little cliched; veteran, weary, jaded cop stumbles across police corruption bringing himself, his family and anyone on his side into harm's way, only to discover that it's those closest to him who are the bad guys.

But Luke Preston's writing style is so punchy, so jagged, so minimalist, conveying only what he needs to to get the message across, that it feels like something different. I've certainly never read anything written this way before and it makes for a nice change. It took me out of my comfort zone and I was happy to stay there for the length of the novel.

The ending leaves it open for a sequel - or even several - but the author would have to up the ante on plot next time to beat this effort.

[Barry Simiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was given the book. Never heard of the writer.

Bloody pity that!

This is a cracker. Started slow and I kept leaving it, but after 20 pages I just bashed through it. Hollywood noir cop thriller set in Melbourne modern. It rocks. Yes the lead is possibly heading into a p,ce where he's indestructible, but it's the first in a series sothat might change. The writing is great, takes a modern Australuan setting and coats it with liberal amounts of Hammett and Chandler and 1930s cop fiction. It has that same snarl in the telling. Is very good. You can almost see Cagney and Bogart squaring off against Bruce Willis and Stallone.

And it ends in just the right spot, a twist and a bust and boom we're waiting for the next one.

Very sorry I didn't take it more seriously when I first got it.

Have a Good Read.

[Balthazar Lawson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book starts with action and it doesn't stop. It's go, go, go from cover to cover, or in the modern age of ebooks, from first electron to the last electron. I enjoyed that.

But the editing of this edition of the book leaves a lot to be desired, with missing words that changed the whole context of some sentences. The time line is very murky as the story does start in the present and jumps back, then jumps back to the present. This all gets confusing at times. Or that may be another case of bad editing.

A good action read.

[Miles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Isn't Australia where England dumped their criminals . . . perhaps that's why the police are the way they're portrayed in this book ! ! !

[Brittany Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book! Read it in two days...page turner..loved the characters and how action packed it was. Looking forward to the next one!