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The second book in Bruen's "Jack Taylor" series (following the Shamus-winner THE GUARDS) picks up with ex-Garda Taylor returning from London in even worse shape than when we last saw him (hard to believe) and asked to help find out who's been murdering Galway's gypsies. THE KILLING OF THE TINKERS is literate, darkly poetic, melancholy, and absolutely brutal. You can almost wring Irish Whiskey out of its pages.
I guess Jack Taylor is akin to marmite. You either love him or dislike him. Well, I love marmite, so there it is. Ken Bruen's clipped, staccato writing style pervades a brooding Irish landscape - windswept, rain-lashed Galway where Taylor has returned with a cocaine habit and little else after a year spent in London, apart from befriending Keegan, a DS in the Met, who is not averse to straying into criminal activity if the end justifies the means. Just as well for Jack when Keegan turns up unann...
Ken Bruen's "The Killing of the Tinkers" in 4 words: good writer, bad character. Ex-cop (Irish variety) and current PI Jack Taylor is off the wagon, big time, and a local gypsy leader asks him to investigate the seeming serial killing of several young 'tinkers'. He doesn't investigate as much as just meander around in an eff-ed up state during almost the entirety of the novel, thinks he finds the right guy for the crimes, the gypsies take care of the punishment, but then there's the whole thing
[image error]“The Killing of the Tinkers†is a lonely book.I used to read a fair amount of crime fiction. A lot, actually. In the last years I've found myself reading less of it, and in the last years I find that the novels I give up on the soonest are crime novels. Why? Well. For several reasons. For starters the term "noir" is being used today as something of a buzzword. It’s used with the same promiscuity as the snack food industry uses ketchup. I’ve lost count on the number of books I...
The Killing of the Tinkers is a much darker, much more focused Jack Taylor novel than the first book in the series. I enjoyed it a lot more than The Guards. Still quite economical with his wording, there is definitely no wasted space in this book. And I can say with full authority now: The Jack Taylor television show is basically a complete reimagining. The Iain Glenn character is more of a good guy, less impulsive...less... uh... terrible... than the Jack Taylor I just read about. This guy is b...
Exceptionally entertaining. Ken Bruen's version of modern noir is tough and tender and the same time. Tinkers are "Irish Travelers," a gypsy like nomadic culture hated by the "Settled People." Someone is killing them and Jack Taylor takes on the task to find the killer while withdrawing from cocaine addiction. So it doesn't get too complicated, he continues his prodigious drinking. Through the haze of alcohol he solves the crime…well maybe. He's not thinking clearly or taking good advice at the
I’m not sure what to make of this book. Jack has added cocaine and amphetamines to his diet of alcohol. I think I don’t like him as much this time around. How much further can he sink?All the literary references don’t mean much to me and some don’t seem relevant to the story. My take is that the author doesn’t have to write them because someone else has, and they make a short book a bit longer.I’ll read this series until I’m tired of it, if it continues with this formula. I also think I need to
So he's now addicted to coke (just finshed the first chapter). I'm so happy I'm not Jack Taylor.So he has now lost most of his teeth and his balls are black and blue - I refer you to my previous sentence.Finished it now. Not sure about these. Its great that the investigations aren’t solved with the precision of a CSI investigation. But that said I’d like a little more detecting from Jack. And it always good to have a hero that is flawed but there are limits to the level of Jack bashing I can enj...
The latest Bruen I’ve read is actually the second Jack Taylor book, after The Guards. For those keeping score at home, this is when Taylor loses his teeth (mark that on your Jack Taylor Injury Scorecard, a big 50 points). I can’t really explain why I haven’t tried to read them in order; I suppose it’s because if I made a deliberate effort to put them all in order I would read them through in one great orgy of words until they were all done and then where would I be? Probably standing on the stre...
"Ken Bruen wowed critics and readers alike when he introduced Jack Taylor in The Guards; he'll blow them away with The Killing of the Tinkers"When I first read The Guards, it had been a few years after seeing the TV production - which I thoroughly enjoyed.The dialogue, storyline, and character is both intriguing and full of despair yet the story totally engaging. When finishing this book it left me eager to continue along with the next book, and to carry on with the whole series.They will both m...
Continuing on from THE GUARDS, my rereading of Ken Bruen's penultimate series continues to bare fruit with THE KILLING OF THE TINKERS being another top read. Jack progresses from mere alcoholic with a good natured if somewhat destructive personality to a full blown drug addict - coke the poison which pumps it's devilishly smooth disguised death in his very veins. It adds another affliction to the already well afflicted - and that's part of the charm isn't it? Jack's not meant to be a nice man, h...
The term 'procedural' has, for some, a taint to it. Routine, churner, etc. Not so the Jack Taylor stories written by Ken Bruen. Jack is a former (read dismissed) Garda, often submissive to the demons drink and drugs. Jack has a keen eye for trouble, his own and that of others. Unlike so many fictional 'tecs, Jack is well-read. Every Jack Taylor story interweaves books and music that inform his life. Some authors are 'name droppers', slipping the names of authors, poets, singers etc as 'evidence'...
Finally. The book where I finally get what the big fuss is about. The two other books by Ken Bruen that I've read, I either didn't like (AMERICAN SKIN) or was a little underwhelmed (THE GUARDS: good but not great).This novel finds a balance between character and setting. The tone, details, and humanity shine from the gutter. The unapologetic approach to the hero is exactly what hardboiled writing is all about.And to top it off, Bruen has thankfully limited the amount of pop culture and music ref...
I did not much care for this book. Jack solves the crimes more by chance than real detective work. For once in my life I prefer the TV series to the book.
Noir at it's Irish best! Ken Bruen is an author of few words. His Jack Taylor books are short, succinct and directly to the point, and let me tell you, a lot happens in between the covers of his books. Jack Taylor is my new favourite anti-hero. He's a hard drinking, hard-scrabble and surprisingly literary PI who lives in Galway, Ireland. This is the second book in the series and Jack is coming back to Galway after a year in London. He left because his life was in a real mess and he had many peop...
3.5I liked this one much more than the first of the series. People who were annoyed by the lists in the first book will be less annoyed; they don't disappear, but they're less frequent. The extremely terse style has been mitigated; there's more than dialogue, chapters are fleshed out, and he actually does a bit more actual detective work, rather than having things fall into his lap.It's still very Galwegian; shoutouts to employees of Charlie Byrnes' bookstore and other locales in and around Galw...
I can't say exactly what it is about this series that resonates with me but - boy - it does. Jack is irreverent, snarky, poor choice maker and alcoholic. However, I find him so endearing.
Another ripping great read courtesy of Ken Bruen. It's important to read the Jack Taylor series in order because the character evolves and you don't want to miss anything. In The Killing of the Tinkers, Jack is hired to find out who is killing members of the Tinker community (aka gypsy). His reputation is catching up with him. There are subplots throughout which will be useful in later books (according to a Jack Taylor reader friend of mine). Jack Taylor is flawed, but a good man. Jack is a well...
I’m not much given to the idea of detective series. For me much of the fun in a book is getting to meet a new character, and that’s gone if it’s someone we’re seeing again after a first – or a dozenth – earlier volume(s). On the other hand, Ken Bruen writes so well, with so sharp and comically sweetened a hardboiled edge, that I think anything he writes is worth a shot.I don’t think this one quite reaches to the level of the first Jack Taylor novel, The Guards, but that’s a masterpiece, so it’s
I just recent read the first in this series and enjoyed it so much that I picked this one, The Killing of the Tinkers, up from the library. In this outing of the series, Jack Taylor is more messed up (if you can believe that is possible) than he was in the first book. Jack has decided to add a side of cocaine addiction to his already rampant alcoholism on his path to self destruction. On top of the drugs and alcohol he also is burning through women, including a wife he picked up in London. Now t...