World Cup Fever hit Britain in 1966, as the country's native team won a heart-stopping overtime match against West Germany, winning the finale in front of a frenzied London crowd. But while the victory lifted national spirits, it still sparked controversy. The winning shot struck the upright and bounced straight down, but many viewers contend that it never actually crossed the line, even though the referees called it a goal after a lengthy conference on the field. Whatever the case—and the issue is still up for debate today—Britain's triumph on the world stage was as tainted as the asterisk by Roger Maris' "61," an unsightly blemish that was arguably worse than a loss. Jake Arnott's tough, punchy, mercilessly cynical second novel, He Kills Coppers, views the World Cup as a fitting backdrop to a city seized by corruption and moral rot, where not even a simple soccer match can come away clean. In this world, cops and crooks stand on equal footing, separated only by their respective degrees of hypocrisy and lawlessness. With iconic villains like the Kray brothers lurking in the shadows, Arnott's book fictionalizes the real-life murder of three policemen by future folk hero Harry Roberts, an incident that reverberated through the culture and left no party a hero. Owing a clear debt to James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential, which plays similar tricks with moral relativism, He Kills Coppers doesn't have a protagonist, or at least not one who could feel comfortable in a white hat; the book's only candidate, a straight-arrow detective, is gunned down after the first 100 pages. For a noir novelist who writes in staccato prose, Arnott lingers in the seedy ambiance for too long before finally cutting to the chase. But by the time the central event occurs, the three main players are sharply defined. Arnott's triggerman is Billy Porter, an ex-soldier and gun enthusiast who returned from battle in Malaysia to a life of petty stickups on the West End. Unlike his legendary counterpart Roberts, who was immortalized by the anarchist chant that inspired the book's title, Porter is portrayed as a common hood whose brush with infamy was less political than coincidental. In contrast, Detective Sergeant Frank Taylor, a rapid climber in the corrupt Flying Squad unit, is an ambitiously shady man who's not averse to the occasional frame-up if it means getting the bad guy or advancing his career. The sleaziest character, a closeted young journalist named Tony Meehan, gets a boost when he breaks the cop-killing story for a lurid tabloid rag, while simultaneously harboring scandals of his own. Though he spends much of his time in 1966, Arnott follows this trio over a three-decade period, deftly interweaving their trajectories while eyeing a city that's sinking further into decay. It's hard to find even the thinnest shred of redemption in He Kills Coppers, but Arnott's misanthropy finds a comfortable place in the crime genre, which has always favored grit over generosity. With tough language and a taste for good old-fashioned sensationalism, he tells it like it is.