|
|
|
1.
|
|
When Jack Taylor blew town at the end of The Guards his alcoholism was a distant memory and sober dreams of a new life in London were shining in his eyes. In the opening pages of The Killing of the Tinkers, Jack's back in Galway a year later with a new leather jacket on his back, a pack of smokes in his pocket, a few grams of coke in his waistband, and a pint of Guinness on his mind. So much for new beginnings.
Before long he's sunk into his old patterns, lifting his head from the bar only every few days, appraising his surroundings for mere minutes and then descending deep into the alcoholic, drug-induced fugue he prefers to the real world. But a big gypsy walks into the bar one day during a moment of Jack's clarity and changes all that with a simple request. Jack knows the look in this man's eyes, a look of hopelessness mixed with resolve topped off with a quietly simmering rage; he's seen it in the mirror. Recognizing a kindred soul, Jack agrees to help him, knowing but not admitting that getting involved is going to lead to more bad than good. But in Jack Taylor's world bad and good are part and parcel of the same lost cause, and besides, no one ever accused Jack of having good sense.
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, a novel of gritty brilliance that cements Bruen's place among the greats of modern crime fiction.
...
|
|
2.
|
|
Michael O'Shea is a member of Ireland's police force, known as The Guards. He's also a sociopath who walks a knife edge between sanity and all-out mayhem. When an exchange program is initiated and twenty Guards come to America and twenty cops from the States go to Ireland, Shay, as he's known, has his lifelong dream come true--he becomes a member of the NYPD. But Shay's dream is about to become New York's nightmare. Paired with an unstable cop nicknamed Kebar for his liberal use of a short, lethal metal stick called a K-bar, the two unlikely partners become a devastatingly effective force in the war against crime. But Kebar harbors a dangerous secret: he's sold out to the mob to help his sister. Her rape and beating leaves her in a coma and pushes an already unstable Kebar over the edge just as Shea’s dark secrets threaten boil over and into the streets of New York. Once Were Cops melds the street poetry of Brooklyn and Dublin into a fast-paced, incomparable hard-boiled novel. This is Ken Bruen at his best. ...
|
|
3.
|
|
Praised by critics around the globe, The Guards introduces Jack Taylor, a disgraced ex-cop battling boredom and addiction on the gritty Galway streets. Still mourning the decades-old death of his father, stinging from his unceremonious ouster from the Garda Siochana-The Guards, Ireland's police force-and staring at the world through the smoky bottom of his beer mug, Jack has nothing to look forward to. Nothing, that is, until a dazzling woman walks into the bar because of a rumor about Jack's talent for finding things. A riveting hard-boiled novel fueled by dark humor and stark violence, The Guards kicks off an exceptional new series....
|
|
4.
|
|
When a letter containing a list of victims arrives in the post, P.I. Jack Taylor tells himself that it’s got nothing to do with him. He has enough to do just staying sane. His close friend Ridge is recovering from surgery, and alcohol’s siren song is calling to him ever more insistently. A guard and then a judge die in mysterious circumstances. But it is not until a child is added to the list that Taylor determines to find the identity of the killer, and stop them at any cost. What he doesn’t know is that his relationship with the killer is far closer than he thinks. And it’s about to become deeply personal. Spiked with dark humor, and fueled with rage at man’s inhumanity to man, this is crime writing at its darkest and most original. ...
|
|
5.
|
|
Somewhere in the teeming heart of London is a man on a lethal mission. His cause: a long-overdue lesson on the importance of manners. When a man gives a public tongue-lashing to a misbehaving child, or a parking lot attendant is rude to a series of customers, the “Manners Killer” makes sure that the next thing either sees is the beginning of his own grisly end.
When he starts mailing letters to the Southeast London police squad, he’ll soon find out just how bad a man’s manners can get. The Southeast is dominated by the perpetual sneer of one Inspector Brant, and while he might or might not agree with the killer’s cause and can even forgive his tactics to some degree, Brant is just ornery enough to employ his trademark brand of amoral, borderline-criminal policing to the hunt for the Manners Killer. For if there’s one thing that drives the incomparable inspector, it’s the unshakeable conviction that if anyone is going to be getting away with murder on his patch, it’ll be Brant himself, thank you very much. ...
|
|
6.
|
|
When Mitchell is released from prison after serving three years for a vicious attack he doesn’t even remember, Billy Norton is there to pick him up. But Norton works for Tommy Logan, a ruthless loan shark lowlife with plans Mitchell wants nothing to do with. Attempting to stay out of Logan’s way, he finds work at the Holland Park mansion of faded movie actress, Lillian Palmer, where he has to deal with her mysterious butler, Jordan. It isn’t long before Mitchell’s violent past catches up with him and people start getting hurt. When his disturbed sister Briony is threatened, Mitchell is forced to act. Academy Award-winning screenwriter William Monahan ( The Departed) has teamed with Quentin Curtis to acquire rights to London Boulevard. Monahan plans to co-produce, write, and make his directorial debut with the movie. This is a masterful work of double dealing and suspense from one of the great crime writers of our time. ...
|
|
8.
|
|
The South East London police squad are down and out: Detective Sergeant Brant is in hot water for assaulting a police shrink, Chief Inspector Roberts' wife has died in a horrific car accident, and WPC Falls is still figuring out how to navigate her job as a black female investigator in the notorious unit. When a serial killer takes his show on the road, things get worse for all three. Nicknamed "The Blitz" by the rabid London media, the killer is aiming for tabloid immortality by killing cops in different beats around the city.
Blitz represents Ken Bruen at his edgy, lethal, and sharp-tongued best, and will reward fans of his Jack Taylor novels with another astonishing, smart, and brutal vision from a writer rapidly becoming one of the best of his generation.
...
|
|
9.
|
|
"If this thriller was any more hard-boiled, you'd be able to paint a face on it and roll it down the hill . . . Noir at its grungiest"-The Good Book Guide Cooper had done his time in prison. Now on the outside, he'd set up a legitimate business with Doc, who he'd met inside. They called themselves "Righteous Repo," and they even had an accountant. The repo firm did good business, but it wasn't anywhere near as exhilarating as the bank jobs they did on the side. Ken Bruen was born in Ireland in 1951. The author of 16 novels, including The Guards and The Dramatist in the Jack Taylor series, he now lives in Galway City with his wife and daughter. The new Jack Taylor novel, The Magdalene Martyrs, is published by St. Martin's Press. ...
|
|
10.
|
|
Jack Taylor brings death and pain to everyone he loves. His only hope of redemption - his surrogate son, Cody - is lying in a hospital in a coma. At least he still has Ridge, his old friend from the Guards, though theirs is an unorthodox relationship. When she tells him that a boy has been crucified in Galway city, he agrees to help her search for the killer. Jack's investigations take him to many of his old haunts where he encounters ghosts, dead and living. Everyone wants something from him, but Jack is not sure he has anything left to give. Maybe he should sell up, pocket his Euros and get the hell out of Galway like everyone else seems to be doing. Then the sister of the murdered boy is burned to death, and Jack decides he must hunt down the killer, if only to administer his own brand of rough justice. ...
|
|
11.
|
|
Stephen Blake is a good man blown in bad directions. He and girlfriend Siobhan, best friend Tommy, IRA terrorist Stapleton, and a particularly American sort of psychopath named Dade, are all on a collision course somewhere between the dive bars of New York and the pitiless desert of the Southwest. This is the long-awaited American novel by Ken Bruen, the hard-boiled master of Irish noir....
|
|
12.
|
|
"The most startlingly original crime novel to emerge this decade."-GQ "The reading equivalent of a boxer's sharp jab to the solar plexus. It's fast-paced, tough and pretty sexy."-Pulp In south London, an unlikely gang of kidnappers-Nick, an ex-bouncer; Dex, a charismatic sociopath; and Lisa, a motormouth junkie femme fatale-hatches a plot. Their prey is a powerful local businessman with an obsession for the poet Rilke. The thing is, each kidnapper has a very different agenda, which means it's only a matter of time before the joking stops and the violence takes over. Ken Bruen's dark contemporary thriller matches a razor-sharp vernacular with a country music soundtrack to create a truly intoxicating and original mix. ...
|
|
13.
|
|
Jack Taylor is walking the delicate edge of a sobriety he doesn't trust when his phone rings. He's in debt to a Galway tough named Bill Cassell, what the locals call a "hard man." Bill did Jack a big favor a while back; the trouble is, he never lets a favor go unreturned.
Jack is amazed when Cassell simply asks him to track down a woman, now either dead or very old, who long ago helped his mother escape from the notorious Magdalen laundry, where young wayward girls were imprisoned and abused. Jack doesn't like the odds of finding the woman, but counts himself lucky that the task is at least on the right side of the law.
Until he spends a few days spinning his wheels and is dragged in front of Cassell for a quick reminder of his priorites. Bill's goons do a little spinning of their own, playing a game of Russian roulette a little too close to the back of Jack's head. It's only blind luck and the mercy of a god he no longer trusts that land Jack back on the street rather than face down in a cellar with a bullet in his skull. He's got one chance to stay alive: find this woman.
Unfortunately, he can't escape his own curiosity, and an unnerving hunch quickly turns into a solid fact: just who Jack's looking for, and why, aren't nearly what they seem.
The Magdalen Martyrs, the third Galway-set novel by Edgar, Barry, and Macavity finalist and Shamus Award-winner Ken Bruen, is a gripping, dazzling story that takes the Jack Taylor series to explosive new heights of suspense.
...
|
|
16.
|
|
Seems impossible, but Jack Taylor is sober---off booze, pills, powder, and nearly off cigarettes, too. The main reason he’s been able to keep clean: his dealer’s in jail, which leaves Jack without a source. When that dealer calls him to Dublin and asks a favor in the soiled, sordid visiting room of Mountjoy Prison, Jack wants to tell him to take a flying leap. But he doesn’t, can’t, because the dealer’s sister is dead, and the guards have called it "death by misadventure.” The dealer knows that can’t be true and begs Jack to have a look, check around, see what he can find out. It’s exactly what Jack does, with varying levels of success, to make a living. But he’s reluctant, maybe because of who’s asking or maybe because of the bad feeling growing in his gut. Never one to give in to bad feelings or common sense, Jack agrees to the favor, though he can’t possibly know the shocking, deadly consequences he has set in motion. But he and everyone he holds dear will find out soon, sooner than anyone knows, in the lean and lethal fourth entry in Ken Bruen’s award-winning Jack Taylor series. ...
|
|
17.
|
|
Ireland, awash with cash and greed, no longer turns to the church for solace or comfort. But the decapitation of Father Joyce in a Galway confessional horrifies even the most jaded citizen.Jack Taylor, devastated by the recent trauma of personal loss, has always believed himself to be beyond salvation. But a new job offers a fresh start, and an unexpected partnership provides hope that his one desperate vision--of family--might yet be fulfilled.An eerie mix of exorcism, a predatory stalker, and unlikely attraction conspires to lure him into a murderous web of dark conspiracies. The specter of a child haunts every waking moment.Explosive, unsettling, and totally original, Ken Bruen’s writing captures the brooding landscape of Irish society at a time of social and economic upheaval. Here is evidence of an unmistakable literary talent. ...
|
|
