THE HACKMAN BLUES

Tony Brady, whose search for a Labour MP's Yorkshire terrier has earned him the title of ``Ace Ventura of Vauxhall,'' is a gay, balding manic-depressive (or at least cyclothymic) who's stopped taking his lithium. Naturally, racist, homophobic, well-connected Irish builder Jack Dunphy, who looks just like Gene Hackman, is convinced that Brady's the perfect man to locate his missing Cambridge-educated daughter Roz. And he's right, because only a few days after he takes Jack's money, Brady and his prison mate, Elias Rasheed Mohammed, find Roz slinking around the Ballistic, a black Brixton club that's home base to a bloke named Leon, who must have something that's keeping Roz happy. Bring her back anyway, says Jack, shoving a fat wad of notes at the master sleuths. Nothing could be simpler than following the client's orders, so Brady and Reed decide to grab Roz from Leon but keep her themselves, extracting payoffs from both the solicitous father and the outraged lover. Even in the hands of someone not so obsessed with blues, toy boys, and Gene Hackman, this would be a less-than-brilliant idea, but fans of Bruen's blistering noir valentine, Rilke on Black (1997), will enjoy seeing the Keystone Crooks get picked off one by one.