The Innocents (Bruno Johnson Series #5)

by David Putnam

Overview

Best-selling author of the Bruno Johnson Crime Series

Booklist sums up Putnam's Bruno Johnson series: "Bruno Johnson believes so passionately in justice that he'll lie, cheat, and steal to achieve it—and he'll pulverize anybody who gets in his way."

The Early Years: Book One

Bruno Johnson, a newly minted L.A. County Sheriff Violent Crimes detective, gets the worst assignment possible—infiltrate a sheriff's narcotics team that may be involved in murder for hire. Gain their trust and be brought into the scheme. If he succeeds, he will have to arrest and testify against his fellow deputies—if he lives that long.

To make matters worse, before Bruno leaves home on the first day of this assignment, he answers the door to find an ex-girlfriend. Without explanation, she hands him a baby girl only weeks old. The child is his. Stunned and terrified, he now faces immediate fatherhood as well as the traitor-like charge to take down his colleagues.

Juggling his complex home life, Bruno tackles his assignment to discover that no one is who they seem to be and that his boss, Lieutenant Wicks, might be involved. His mission is further complicated when an attractive female deputy, recently transferred from Public Affairs, is also put on the case. She has no street experience, and Bruno carries the extra burden of watching her back—a tough assignment made tougher by personal attraction.

As Bruno gets deeper and deeper into the corruption, he doesn't know whom to trust, and in the end, confides in the wrong person.

Michael Connelly says Putnam's crime fiction is: ". . . a gritty street poem recited by a voice unalterably committed to redemption and doing the right thing in a wrong world."

While all of the novels in the Bruno Johnson Crime Series stand on their own and can be read in any order, the publication sequence is:

The Disposables
The Replacements
The Squandered
The Vanquished
The Innocents
The Reckless
The Heartless
The Ruthless (coming February 2021)
The Sinister (coming February 2022)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608092581
Publisher:	Oceanview Publishing
Publication date:	02/06/2018
Series:	Bruno Johnson Series , #5
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	554,976
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Best-selling author David Putnam comes from a family of law enforcement and always wanted to be a cop. During his career, he did it all: worked in narcotics, served on FBI-sponsored violent crimes teams, and was cross-sworn as a US Marshall, pursuing murder suspects and bank robbers in Arizona, Nevada, and California. Putnam did three tours on the San Bernardino County Sheriff's SWAT team, executing dynamic entries, hostage rescues, and serving as team sniper. He has also worked in criminal intelligence and internal affairs and has supervised corrections, patrol, and a detective bureau. In Hawaii, Putnam worked as Special Agent for the Attorney General investigating smuggling and white-collar crimes.

Editorial Reviews

11/20/2017
Set in Los Angeles in 1988, Putnam’s uneven fifth Bruno Johnson novel (after 2017’s The Vanquished) opens dramatically. Deputy Bruno’s morning tryst with the captain’s secretary at his East Compton apartment is interrupted by a visit from his former lover, Sonja Kowalski. Sonja thrusts an infant into Bruno’s arms, saying the baby is his and she can’t take care of their daughter. It’s an inauspicious way to start his first day as the least experienced member of the new four-person L.A. County Sheriff Violent Crimes unit. After dropping off the baby with his understanding father, Bruno joins his team and its leader, Lt. Robby Wicks, whom he’s not sure he can trust. Bruno is soon given an undercover assignment—to infiltrate a sheriff’s narcotics unit that may be operating a murder-for-hire scheme. Putnam, a law enforcement veteran, realistically explores a corrupt police unit, but too much violence and clichéd dialogue overwhelm the story. Bruno comes across as too naïve to be a cop, even a new one, and the other characters are merely caricatures. Agents: Mike and Susan Farris, Farris Literary Agency. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"The Innocents tells a story so fast and so taut it never touches the ground . . . David Putnam is one of the few writers who can bear comparison to Joseph Wambaugh.” —Timothy Hallinan, Edgar, Shamus, Macavity, and Lefty Award nominee

“The Innocents . . . hums with moral contradictions, terrible choices and a lot of testosterone.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Praise for the Bruno Johnson Crime Series

“I really loved The Disposables. It’s raw, powerful, and eloquent. It’s a gritty street poem recited by a voice unalterably committed to redemption and doing the right thing in a wrong world.” —Michael Connelly, New York Times best-selling author

“Dark, disturbing, and all too believable, this is the tale of one man’s quest for atonement in a world where innocence is a liability.” —T. Jefferson Parker, New York Times best-selling author

“Reading a novel by David Putnam is almost as good as riding shotgun in a patrol car. He writes what he knows and what he knows is that justice on the mean streets isn’t always black and white.” —Robin Burcell, New York Times best-selling author

“This is a police procedural that dazzles with authenticity, sharply-drawn characters, crackling dialogue, and insider details that only a real cop could bring to the page. Putnam can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Joseph Wambaugh and Michael Connelly.” —Lee Goldberg, New York Times best-selling author

“Putnam is a master of the gritty realism of law and order at street level. I guarantee that The Ruthless will grab you by the throat, shove you against the wall, and won’t release you until the final, satisfying page.” —William Kent Krueger, New York Times best-selling author

“Putnam puts his years of law enforcement experience to good use in The Squandered, a shocking and intense tale of brotherly love and redemption realized in the midst of moral decay. It’s a raw and gritty story I couldn’t put down.” —C. J. Box, New York Times best-selling author

“David Putnam's The Heartless is terrific—a smart, well-written, relentless account of a battle against evil, fought by a protagonist who has a real man's flaws, but also shows us the kind of heroism that's real.” —Thomas Perry, New York Times best-selling author

From the Publisher

2017-11-13
Bruno Johnson, an African-American detective in LA, goes undercover to figure out if a group of cops has gone rogue.Bruno's white former girlfriend, Sonja, knocks on his door one day and stuns him by handing over their newborn daughter to raise, a child he didn't know existed. He and his father welcome the baby's presence, but life turns dicey when Bruno is assigned to the LA County Sheriff's Violent Crimes Team. An early case results in the unnecessary death of a suspect, and his boss, Lt. Robby Wicks, invites him to a barbecue "to celebrate the team's first kill." "A man died," Bruno says. "That's nothing to celebrate." But the barbecue is an excuse to have him meet Deputy Chief Rudyard, who wants him to go undercover in a police narcotics squad that's operating a murder-for-hire ring and identify "the dog heavy"—that is, the person running the operation. Bruno is a likable and principled character who knows he's being sucked into a bad situation and can't do much to avoid it, even becoming an unwitting accessory to murder. Some of his racist colleagues hate him—one refers to himself and Bruno as "a white guy and a smoke," and Bruno struggles to contain his rage. Whether a white author can truly understand a black cop's feelings about racism is hard to know, but Putnam (The Vanquished, 2017, etc.) creates a sympathetic hero. Meanwhile, people may not be who they say they are, and no colleague is above suspicion. "They need to get you dirty more than ever," Wicks tells Bruno in the middle of the operation, and "they" are on the brink of succeeding. The scenes feel authentic and tense thanks to Putnam's decades of law enforcement experience.Great reading for crime-fiction fans.

Kirkus Reviews