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EXCERPT: The nun was gathering up the song sheets. She loved this time of the morning, the sun streaming through the stained glass. Her habit felt heavy but she offered it for the souls in Purgatory. She found a ten euro note in the end pew, was tempted to pocket it, buy a feast of ice cream. But blessing herself, she shoved it in the poor box. It slid in easily as the box was empty - who gave alms any more? She noticed the door to the confessional ajar. Tut-tutting, she felt a tremor of annoyan...
Another solid addition to the Jack Taylor series Priest Dark secrets The abuse Revenge is a dish served cold Investigation SobrietyAnd a new chapter
Read back to back with Jack Taylor #4. I had to. Events at the end of The Dramatist left me reeling. Could anything worse have befallen Jack? Is Galway the kind of place to seek redemption? God, Jack - I really felt your despair. Your tortured soul. And the dark fiction continues in Priest.Jack leaves hospital - the madhouse, the loony bin - where he has been for several months. Refuses further medication - "I felt my eyes retreat from the nine-yard stare, move away from the dead place." How did...
A very strong medicine this book,its a rare book that is darkly funny,deeply depressing. I laughed and i was emotionally close to tears. Not because of sensational writing but because of stark,realistic human drama.The title doesnt say well how this great story has many themes,focuses even more on Jack Taylor. Less pop culture references that was the only flaw of the early books.The powerful prose,the great black,ironic humour,the characters that walk around in this series never seem to amaze me...
PRIEST follows on from the shocking events at the end of THE DRAMATIST and is every bit as good as it predecessor. The only gripe I have, is Bruen tends to lean towards the formulaic, albeit, a formula he devised himself with THE PRIEST mirroring THE DRAMATIST in many ways; the cases are in the peripheral and there is a death that once again threatens to turn the reformed Jack Taylor into the drug addled drunk he once was.Without spoiling the story, lets say Jack Taylor is back to his…err, best
If you haven't read ken Bruen yet you must. He's all at once funny, dark, thoughtful, topical and suspenseful.Priest looks at sex abuse in Ireland and its not a barrel of laughs as far as the topic is concerned but it is riveting.Pick it up--it's one of the my favorites for this year.Tom SchreckAuthor of TKOps If you're a mystery lover my books "On The Ropes" and "TKO" make great Holiday gifts for Evanovich, Parker, Travis McGee, Crais and DeMille fans ( sorry for the blatant self promotion!)
Description: Jack is hired by Father Malachy to investigate the death of a priest, Father Royce, who has been beheaded. He discovers the cleric abused two boys, Michael Clare and Tom Reed, several years earlier. Shortly after interviewing Tom Reed, he is found dead in the bath of a suspected heroin overdose. Jack initially suspects that Reed may have been targeted by a relative of a young boy whom he raped ten years ago, but when he finds a note identical to the one left at the scene of Father R...
For all the praise levelled at Ken Bruen for his "hard-boiled" detective novels featuring Jack Taylor this fifth instalment is much more character study than mystery. Somebody beheaded a priest, Taylor is released from a mental institute and is almost immediately thrust back to work to solve the case, privately. The actual detective narrative could fit in to two or three pages for all Bruen cares about it. What is much more of interest to him, and I would hope us readers too, is the human condit...
I like reading Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor novels. But I can't stand to think about Jack Taylor afterwords. Here's why-"A loud howl of anguish had awakened me. I'd sat up, terror in my soul, wondering what on earth was happening to some poor fucker to make them emit such a sound, then felt tears on my cheeks and realized the person who'd made the cry was me. I don't think distress gets more awful than that." But don't feel sorry for Taylor; drunk or sober he births enough rage to keep the Galway lig...
My unrequited bromance with Jack Taylor continues. After the devastating end of The Dramatist, Jack ends up in "the madhouse"Oh, there was screaming, but it was silent. The wonders of medication. And for me, they provided what I most wanted-numbnessand this book spends plenty of time looking at how he deals with his release as he tries to put his life back together and stay sober following the consequences of the previous book.As with most of my favorite detective/PI series this book isn't reall...
3.5 stars for this Jack Taylor installment. This time Jack is just released from the mental hospital after his guilt over the death of his friends' young daughter. Coming home, though, can be difficult. Trying to remain sober takes its toll as Jack tries to find his footing. He investigates the beheading of a priest in this "mystery" but really it's a character study and how the actions one takes in life can haunt forever. I've been reading these out of order as I started, I believe with 7, then...
PRIEST (Private Investigator-Ireland-Cont) – ExBruen, Ken – 5th in seriesScorpion Press, 2006- UK HardcoverJack Taylor is out of the madhouse, sober and trying to give up smoking. A young man wants to be Jack’s partner as private investigators and the son Jack never had. Jack is also the guilt over the death of his friends’ daughter and its result on them. Jack’s one friend from the Guarda is being stalked, and a priest, with a history of pedophilia, has been found decapitated in his confessiona...
The word that keeps coming to mind to describe this book is "thin." Thin plot, thin characters, lazy writing under a thin veneer of noir.
I was not familiar with the character or adventures or misadventures of Jack Taylor so this was for me an one of book I read.It starts with a man in psychiatric hospital who has stopped living after under his supervision a little gril died and he takes it personal. When he "recovers" and is released in the world too much has changed and nothing it all. When Jack returns to his native Galway he sees the changes and yet nobody sees him being changed. He is challenged in the way people recognize hi...
Jack is in all sorts of self-inflicted trouble again. He's in hospital, severely affected by a nervous breakdown, after his negligence caused the death of someone very very important to him and his last close friends, when he's bought back from the brink by the kindness of another patient. On his release Jack returns to his previous life with a new-found determination to avoid drinking and drugs. When his least favourite priest, Father Malachy asks Jack for help in discovering why a local priest...
A priest who had just returned from 20 years of working overseas is found beheaded in his church. Father Malachy confesses to Jack that now he himself fears for his life and reveals a tragic story about the murdered priest. The latter had committed a terrible deed before being moved overseas - Father Malachy suspects an act of revenge.4* The Guards (Jack Taylor, #1) 3* The Magdalen Martyrs (Jack Taylor, #3) 4* The Dramatist (Jack Taylor, #4)4* Priest (Jack Taylor, #5)3* Cross (Jack Taylor, #6)
A good while back someone recommended Ken Bruen as a Noir author to me. Hadn't heard about him before so delighted to put him on my To Read pile.I subsequently learned two things:1) Ken Bruen is Irish and writes crime fiction set in Galway. Ireland has been my adopted home for the best part of two decades so I was curious but also reminiscent that there is a lot of things that Ireland does well, but that crime fiction (and especially Noir) isn't exactly high up on that list.2) I accidentally stu...
Here we are, at installment number five of the Jack Taylor series. First, let me say that I've read a number of reviews of this book in which it was the first Taylor book the reviewer had read -- this is probably not the best one to start with. There's so much of Jack's character that begins with book one (The Guards) that starting at book five leaves you with big holes to be filled in only by sketchy references to events from the others. brief look (no spoilers, I promise)Like its predecessors
Apparently part of a series, I picked up this gritty, Irish noir because I liked the blurbs on the back. I think I'm going to have to amend my "types of mysteries I like" list to include noir.If you're keeping track, the list is now: 1) Agatha Christie, and other female British authors2) NoirWe meet our detective, Jack Taylor, just as he's getting out of an asylum where he spent some time after a child he was minding fell out of a window to her death. Now staying away from alcohol, he bounces ar...