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As I work my way through Bruen’s extraordinary Jack Taylor series – this being number three – I keep looking for patterns. I find myself enjoying it all tremendously, and Bruen makes it all look so easy that I figure there has to be a secret weaving throughout it. If I could only bottle what he does, I’d be a better writer than I am.There are clear elements: Jack disappoints everyone who gets close to him, especially the women foolish enough to fall for him. He stumbles through a crime that seem...
One picks up one of Ken Bruen's crime novels featuring his protagonist, ex-Garda Jack Taylor hoping that this time, at least for a while, Jack will get himself together. He is an alcoholic, a stone, two-fisted drinker. Repentant? Oh, yes, all the times he is suffering from a killer hangover or a blackout which lands him hospital . But that feeling lasts only as long as the terrible need, the want overcomes his resolve to quit. Or at least , to slow down. Or pace his boozing. Or not. Yes, the han...
Talk of the town just now is Philomena, the movie. It tells the story of a woman who was a victim of one of the wicked manifestations of the Catholic Church. The film looks OK. I may see it one day, perhaps on DVD. However it plays out, I’m pretty sure it won’t be able to shine a prayer-candle to Ken Bruen’s The Magdalen Martyrs. I loved Jack Taylor before arriving at this novel. It’s difficult not to. He articulates his inner workings with charm, humour and a good deal of learned profundity.Her...
Jack Taylor is back. Investigating the death of a rich husband ? Could the wife have killed him ? Jack has to pay back Bill's favor from the last book. Who are those Magdalen girls and why is Bill interested in one of them.Jack is still at Mrs Bailey hotel. Reading crime fiction. Using drugs more designer stuff this time and pints of beer and double Jameson. Enjoyable. .smooth and book 4 should be awesome.Read it again Still solid the second time around
From IMDb:Galway Private Investigator JACK TAYLOR is hired by the daughter of a former inmate of the infamous Magdalen Laundries to find the identity of a former nun, known only as LUCIFER, who was notorious for taking pleasure in torturing the girls.4* The Guards (Jack Taylor, #1) 3* The Magdalen Martyrs (Jack Taylor, #3) 3* Cross (Jack Taylor, #6)
Again, the style is more.......focused? than in the first novel. He's moving away from the lists. Jack's addictions take up so much of his time/the space in this novel, but then again, I suppose that's the way it is in real life. A little more detective work here, but I think what puts people off is that you don't always see his thought process when it comes to the detection, but definitely see the thought process when it comes to the addiction. Bruen takes the shoutouts to a whole new level, wi...
Bruen is three for three. Jack Taylor is a healthy mix of everything that is bad about people and those parts that we all wish we could do better. In The Magdalen Martyrs, Jack is hired by a local thug to find the woman who was in charge of managing and disciplining the young girls in a home for wayward girls. We don't get a complete picture of what she's done; however, Bruen offers just enough of a view to make our insides turn to jelly. Jack does as asked, and paid for (calling in favors and s...
There is a lot of wit in this satisfying crime thriller. Loved the visit to the anti smoking drug dealer.
Description: Jack is hired by Maggie McCarthy, the daughter of a recently deceased former inmate at St Monica's, an infamous Magdalen laundry in Galway, who wishes to identify the sadistic nun mentioned in her mother's diary, known only as Lucifer. The investigation is quickly hampered when Cody discovers that incriminating church records have vanished; while Jack is warned to drop the case by local criminal, Bill Cassell. As the diary reveals the depth of Lucifer's brutality, Jack discovers a 5...
The Magdalen Martyrs (Jack Taylor #3)Who could not love the Jack Taylor books by Ken BruenThis 3rd book of a 14 book series“Jack Taylor is walking the delicate edge of a sobriety he doesn't trust when his phone rings. He's in debt to a Galway tough named Bill Cassell, what the locals call a "hard man." Bill did Jack a big favor a while back; the trouble is, he never lets a favor go unreturned”Full of demons of life with plenty of addictions – but it is the dialogue that keeps you coming back!
This is book #3 of the Jack Taylor series. If you read the reviews, you'll see they are polarizing novels. Some see them as a celtic noir take on pulp fiction, others find them unrelentingly grim & derivative. Jack's past is well established & informs his situation & choices. Hopelessly addicted to booze & anything else that blurs his reality, this is a man desperate to forget the past while trying to decide if he wants a future. The books are narrated in the first person, full of Jack's persona...
Back to Jack. Cannot help it. I love Ken Bruen's books - the Jack Taylor series. This is the third. The ex-Garda protagonist, hapless alcoholic, one might say hopeless as well, Jack staggers through life in Galway as a kind of honorary private detective and a mess of a human being. Hired by thugs who recognise his tough-guy bravado. Doesn’t quite work out for Jack, never does. He does get laid; the drugs help. This is real Irish noir. I know there are those that don’t like this series. But I enj...
"I feel the guilt and recriminations still. The line of the dead who accuse me at every turn of sleep, they come in silent dread, the eyes fixed on me as I twist and moan in vain hope of escape. So I drink."If there is one author I turn to when I want to read a readers book, it's got to be Ken Bruen. His Jack Taylor series is poetic poison in a purely positive way. His perennial drunk and drug addled private investigator is a book junkies binge of choice. Not only are the Jack Taylor books lace...
Third in the series featuring Jack Taylor, Magdalen Martyrs continues the story of the ex-Guard. In this installment, his old nemesis Bill Galway, a local tough guy no one wants to mess with, is calling in his debt (you had to have read the earlier books to understand what I mean). Cassell didn't ask for payment from Jack when he did him an earlier favor, but now he's calling in his marker. It seems he wants the whereabouts of one Rita Monroe, who used to work in a Magdalen laundry (read about t...
These are too good I should reread them, I know I have missed much of the literary character. Jack is a complete mess. But somehow you never give up on him. Strong characters with little or no background. Plots that are barely there. Lots of Ireland. Lots of dark and rough rough images. This was a nasty one. The quotes and allusions are top of lists I want to read. Perhaps the scam is the intensity. Hard to put down and harder to forget.
This is the third book in the Jack Taylor series, and we find that not much has changed with Jack. He's still living in the same third rate hotel and being looked after by the octogenarian woman who owns the establishment. He is still drinking, smoking and taking all kinds of drugs. And he keeps finding himself in personal danger as he pursues his lines of enquiries. Jack is fully aware of his shortcomings, and he has oodles of coping mechanisms to help him deal with his self-loathing. For examp...
Ken Bruen is as dark as they come. Yet out of his darkness there always seems to be a flicker of light to give the reader hope. He is literate of both books and music allowing the reader some pride when he/she actually gets the references, or drives desire to find out when the references are obscure. Breen's main character is a wreck of a human being still drifting like a ghost ship on the seas of life. Few of the minor characters are likable and those that are often meet bad ends. Bruen's take
Why you would hire a drug addled alcoholic to investigate anything is beyond me. But here is Jack Taylor who is ex Garda, hired to find a woman by local thug Bill Cassell. This woman, he says, was known as The Angel at the dreadful Magdalene Laundries. Jack doesn’t really ask why he wants to find her. This is his style. Don’t ask too much, till it’s too late. Another man wants Taylor to prove his femme fatale of a stepmother actually killed his father. Jack is a good man, ruined by addiction and...
I expected a lot from Ken Bruen's prose, and he delivered. The spare style made the book flow easily for me. I wish I could have found the first couple of books in the series, but sometimes starting in the middle of things is good introduction. Jack Taylor is an absolutely despicable character that I now have the pleasure to know. I look forward to reading of more of his strife.
I thought I would spend a little more time with Jack Taylor and I'm not sure I'm happy I did. This series is dark and not in a spooky, creepy kind of way, just a sad, lonely depressing kind of way. I'm not sure how much longer I can stomach this series but I have two more books so I will tackle those and hope there is some redemption. Jack is a broken man, and if the alcohol doesn't kill him, someone else surely will. He used to be a good cop now he just stumbles through life making drastic mist...