The Emerald Lie

July 4, 2016
Brooding thoughts of suicide and loss haunt Jack Taylor in Irish author Bruen’s desultory 12th novel featuring the Galway PI and former Garda officer (after 2015’s Green Hell). Of course, Jack is also preoccupied with lists of the authors he has been reading, the music he listens to, and the TV shows he binge watches. The main menace this round may be the Grammarian, who kills over gaffes in speech. But a side trip to London puts Jack in the sphere of another criminal with an interest in young children. Series regulars such as the deadly Emily/Emerald and Sergeant Ridge, a former police colleague of Jack’s, make the scene, though Galway and its living history trumps the players that strut across the stage. With his easy episodic survey of the moment-to-moment in Jack’s life—each sip of Jameson, every walking of the dog, the sudden beatings and murders—Bruen remains on the mountaintop of contemporary Irish noir. Sprightly, elliptical prose is a plus (“the ubiquitous McDonald’s bag. In my time, weapons are always delivered thus”). Agent: Lukas Ortiz, Philip G. Spitzer Literary Agency.

July 1, 2016
On learning that he has three months to live, former PI Jack Taylor says, Least now I never have to read Salman Rushdie. Veteran Bruen readers will sense that something's off with Jack even before the diagnosis comes in: his rants about present-day Ireland, the Catholic Church, and his own failings are muted, almost perfunctory. He's comfortable and happy walking his new Labrador puppy and watching American TV shows like Breaking Bad and The Wire, even opining that the latter is the Great American Novel. Jack has become an old man, his screeds lacking his characteristic splenetic panache. He even seems to be drinking less. But Jack's Galway remains chock-a-block with madness. A serial killer known as the Grammarian is murdering people on the street who use incorrect grammar, then going home for a refreshing DIY electroconvulsive-therapy session. But charming, crazy, murderous Emily/Emerald reappears; she knows the Grammarian and wants him dead. Will this be the final Jack Taylor novel? Bruen aficionados will be eagerly waiting for a second opinion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

April 1, 2016

Even as he cautiously agrees to help a devastated father find those responsible for his daughter's gruesome rape and murder, vigilante Jack Taylor works with spitfire new sidekick Emily (who called herself Emerald in Green Hell) to waylay the serial killer nicknamed the Grammarian--he's an Eton and Cambridge graduate who kills over dangling modifiers. Two Barry and Shamus awards apiece and two Edgar nominations make Bruen a don't-miss author.

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