Irish noir!

Jack Taylor, ex Garda, Jameson whiskey glugging alcoholic, and private investigator, attracts tragedy and psychotics in equal amounts. Jack has hit an all time low with the murder of his daughter. The last thing he needed was to become emerged in random acts of murder targeting the Gardai.
How is it that this man limps or more often than not, slides from one disastrous situation to another just by being?
The action in Galway Girl is brutal and swift buoyed along by the protagonists who are involving themselves in a deadly game of one upmanship. And when Jack becomes the target, well anything can and does happen.
Does Jack walk on the wild side, flatlining his emotional needs in a bottle of whiskey or has he just become so inured to what normal people are horrified by that he just can't seem to care?
(My visual image of Jack is as always tied to the onscreen detective as portrayed by Iain Glen in his Gardai coat, a few days stubble on his chin, decidedly rumpled, lurching through various mishaps, often without conscious intent).
Jack, always a puzzle and a pleasure!

A Mysterious Press ARC via NetGalley ( )

Galway Girl, book number fourteen in Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor series, adds yet another brutal chapter to Jack Taylor’s long, dark history. Taylor is a former Irish cop with a history of mental illness who regularly drinks himself into the kind of stupor that can take days to recover from. The man has suffered the kind of personal loss that would have driven weaker men to suicide – but Jack Taylor is anything but a weak man. Nor is he a bad man.

What he is, though, is a cynic with a big mouth; a man who understands exactly how the real works and is not afraid to shout about it in public. Taylor can count the friends he still has in the Garda on fewer than half the fingers on one hand, and he gave up counting his active enemies on the force a long time ago. And while Galway is still very much a Catholic-Church-dominated city, Taylor has some very powerful enemies (particularly one who hopes to soon become a bishop) there, too. His few real friends are found among the regulars in Galway’s pubs. But most dangerous for the church, the Garda, and Galway’s criminals, Jack Taylor is still a do-gooder always willing to rush to the defense of those who can’t defend themselves.

But now members of the Garda are being assassinated one-by-one, and it looks like Taylor is somehow connected to the deaths. The killers are three young sociopaths who have bonded over their shared desire to destroy what little mental stability Taylor still has, and killing his ex-colleagues is just part of their longer-term plan. As the number of assassinations mount, the police turn to Taylor for help – much to the consternation of both sides.

But as usual in a Ken Bruen novel, the main plot is not the most important thing about Galway Girl; Bruen’s novels are more about atmosphere and character development than they are the main plot. Along the way, there are sometimes so many side plots being explored and resolved that the reader can easily forget what the main plot even is. Jack Taylor has a reputation on the streets (and he tries to make his meager living as one of Galway’s few private detectives) so it is common for him to receive visits from people afraid to go to the police for help. And, especially when those needing help are women or children, Taylor is always ready to drop everything else to see what he can do to help.

Bottom Line: Galway Girl is Irish noir at its best, a novel in which the city of Galway herself plays as important a role as any of the book’s characters. Surreal and dreamlike at times, the novel often requires a healthy suspension of disbelief to move one of its several plot lines forward, but that’s all just part of the fun for regular Ken Bruen readers. Bruen’s sparse and stylistically-unusual writing style is the icing on this Jack Taylor cake, a book that I particularly recommend to fans of really dark crime fiction. ( )

Jack Taylor's best years, if you could call them that, seem to be behind him. The brutal murder of his daughter has left him just barely coping, drowning his sorrow in Jameson and drugs. When Garda ask him to help in a case, he declines. As the body count rises and the dead approach his own doorstep both literally and figuratively, Jack begins to suspect these murders aren't random, that they are meant as a personal message to him. And he is not far wrong because an unholy trinity of killers has come together to wreak revenge and they won't stop until everyone he cares about is dead.

Galway Girl, the fifteenth in the Jack Taylor series by Ken Bruen clearly follows another story (or maybe several) in the series, one I haven't read, but I was able to follow the tale easily. It is told from the perspective of both Jack and one of the perpetrators, a woman named Jericho, the Galway girl of the title, whose love of murder and pain goes back a long, long way.

Ken Bruen is the master of Irish noir and Galway Girl is an excellent example of the genre. It is dark, violent, almost poetic in its descriptions, suffused with cynicism and black humour, with Jack, the quintessential amoral hero, a loner soaked in booze and personal tragedy. The characters themselves tend to be one-dimensional, black and white representations of good and evil. For those who are not used to noir, this may be off-putting but the short sentences and paragraphs keep the story moving at a frenetic pace and the staccato beat to the dialogue make it highly readable, in fact, well-nigh unputdownable.

Thanks to Edelweiss+ and Mysterious Press for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review ( )

Against all odds, Galway’s best known fixer is still alive & kicking. Well…kicking may be an exaggeration. Jack Taylor is in a bit of a funk. All the years of hard living are catching up with him & a recent loss has him in a tailspin.

If that weren’t bad enough, people around him are dropping like flies. A lovely young cop who made the mistake of being seen with him, another he used to work with…both were killed in brazen attacks. If he didn’t know better, Jack might think he’s the common denominator. Oh wait…

Jack has always been a well read guy so I hope he’s up on his Faulkner because the past has just come roaring back to haunt him. The story picks up on events from book #11 (Green Hell) one of the best in the series IMHO. In this instalment, someone is out to destroy everyone Jack cares about before finishing him off. The reason? Well, that would be telling. But we soon learn why an unlikely trio of killers has painted a target on his back.

Jericho is a young Galway girl who’s….uh….a little different (I really don’t want to tick her off). She’s come back to get revenge for a loved one & as far as she’s concerned it’s all Jack’s fault. But she needs help & quickly recruits a couple of locals who have their own bones to pick with the former guard. And so begins a deadly game designed to make him suffer. Let’s face it, Jack doesn’t have a lot of friends left & he’s in no shape to take another emotional hit. But having nothing to lose can be very liberating.

Jeez Louise, this one had me looking over MY shoulder, never mind Jack’s. The first “Holy Crap” moment comes at 5% in & the narrative keeps you nervous as you try to anticipate Jericho’s next move. In typical style, the author mixes violence with Jack’s darkly humorous observations on books, sport, politics & Irish culture. It should come across as the story of a bitter man who’s hit rock bottom but Bruen includes small moments that give us a glimmer of hope for his long suffering anti-hero. I had no idea where this was going & I defy any reader to predict how it ends. All I’ll say is if you happen to suffer from ornithophobia you might want to follow Jack’s lead & keep the Jameson nearby.

It’s bleak, Irish noir laced with the blackest of humour. In other words, it’s Bruen. So I’ll end with this. Jack, we have to chat. I love you like a brother & worry about you between books. But after the events of this one, I’m rethinking our relationship. Maybe we should keep it casual. You know, like infrequent pen pals or something 😳 ( )

Oh, Jack, Jack, Jack. I think you're slipping. Think maybe the large amounts of Jameson you inbibe may finally be doing you in. I mean really, when did you get so trusting? You let two sob stories manipulate you. Not good! How do these people manage to find you. Why you are a walking magnet for danger and every psychopath in Galway. God knows, you have had more than your fair share of tragedy and sorrow. You are such a dark, dark man, your saving graces, loyalty to those you love, though not many of them left, the books you read, and the habit you have of wanting to protect the week. You are so flawed, but incredibly interesting, maybe the most interesting character in my reading ouvre.

So, I'll be back, but we will never be friends. Bad things happen to those who get too close. See you soon.

ARC from Edelweiss. ( )