Headstone

August 29, 2011
Irish author Bruen’s hard-hitting ninth Jack Taylor novel (after The Devil) finds the Galway PI coping with alcoholism, a permanent limp, hearing loss, and emotional scars that continually threaten to take him down. For once, however, Taylor appears to have found a promising love interest in Laura, an American-born crime novelist, with whom he’s recently enjoyed a romantic idyll in Paris. Of course, moments of grace are fleeting in Bruen’s world, and things rapidly head south after Taylor receives a miniature gravestone in the post, courtesy of a group of psychopaths calling themselves “Headstone.” Led by a fanatic recidivist criminal from a previous Taylor case, they target the “weak,” including the handicapped, the mentally ill, and the homeless. Now they have their sights set on Taylor and everyone close to him. That the plot is a tad cartoonish and over-the-top scarcely matters in a remarkable series that at heart is about one man’s reckoning with a lifetime of pain and loss in a rapidly changing Ireland.

May 1, 2011

Mystery champion Otto Penzler recently bought back the Mysterious Press, which he founded in 1975 and then sold; he's relaunching it with Grove Atlantic. Among the new imprint's first books is this latest in Irish crime writer Bruen's Jack Taylor series, which debuted with The Guards, a Shamus winner and Edgar, Macavity, and Barry finalist. Here, Jack is up against a completely amoral bunch called Headstone that's terrorizing Galway. A brief, hard-bitten extract turned my blood to ice. Definitely buy for your thriller readers.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2011
It took the devil himself (The Devil, 2010) to distract Jack Taylor from his dyspeptic, fatalistic, and often hilarious existential screeds against the new Ireland, the institutional Catholic Church, his own failings, and the fact that almost everyone he ever cared about is dead. Now Jack is distracted again but in a new way: he is in love! I don't do happy. Yet he is coming close until one day the mail arrives, and Jack gets a small package containing a miniature headstone, prompting him to throw back the Jameson-Guinness-Xanax cocktails with abandon. When he is abducted, beaten, and has two fingers sheared off his hand, the cocktails serve as painkillers. Many drinks and drugs later, he divines that his assailants plan to commit the first Irish Columbine, targeting a special-needs school. This one is vintage Bruen. Jack's week in Paris with his new love is eloquently described. Subplots involving Ireland's cratered economy and corrupt priests fuel fine new rants, and Taylor muses about books worth reading and the joys of Irish rock 'n' roll. A must for the Bruen faithful.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)