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Ken Bruen

A dark, edgy novel from a master of Irish crime fiction who “is threatening to become a mass cult figure in the U.S. as well as a critical favorite” (The Atlantic).
 
 An elderly priest is nearly beaten to death. A special-needs boy is brutally attacked. Evil has many guises, and private investigator Jack Taylor has encountered most of them. But nothing before has ever truly terrified him until he confronts a group calling itself Headstone, responsible for a series of random violent crimes in Galway, Ireland.
 
 As Headstone barrels along its deadly path right to the center of Taylor’s life, he will need to call upon his own capacity for brutality in order to stop them, in this suspenseful novel from a writer called “a Celtic Dashiell Hammett” (The Philadelphia Inquirer).
 
 “A nonstop rampage of intrigue, mayhem, lunacy and dark-dark-dark humor.” —Shelf Awareness

Mysterious Press

The Jack Taylor Novels

Headstone

An Irish ex-cop is lured into a violent game by a vengeful killer in this “excellent” crime novel by an Edgar Award finalist (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Former cop Jack Taylor is recovering from mental and physical wounds, as well as from addictions to a variety of substances. But this fragile existence is threatened when a vigilante begins targeting the scum of Galway, signing mysterious notes with the moniker “C33. ” The murderer addresses these cryptic letters to Jack, trying to goad him into joining the violent spree.

While Jack tries to unravel the mystery and motives of this demented killer, he’s also brought into the fold of an enigmatic tech billionaire who has been buying up massive amounts of property in Galway, seemingly in the hopes of offering this downtrodden city a better future. Yet if Jack has learned one thing living in Ireland, it's that people who outwardly claim to be on the side of righteousness are likely harboring far more nefarious motives beneath the surface.

With the help of his friends, a former drug dealer-turned-zen master and a dogged police sergeant, Jack is determined to track down C33, even if it jeopardizes his livelihood, his friends, and the remaining shreds of his sanity…

“Noir fans will find what they love here. ”—Booklist (starred review)

Purgatory

“The Godfather of the modern Irish crime novel … writes in machine gun fashion … reminiscent of the work of Raymond Chandler and Peter Cheyenne. ” —The Irish Times

In Green Hell, Bruen’s dark angel of a protagonist has hit rock bottom: one of his best friends is dead, the other has stopped speaking to him; he has given up battling his addiction to alcohol and pills; and his firing from the Irish national police, the Guards, is ancient history. But Jack isn’t about to embark on a self-improvement plan. Instead, he has taken up a vigilante case against a respected professor of literature at the University of Galway who has a violent habit his friends in high places are only too happy to ignore. And when Jack rescues a preppy American student on a Rhodes Scholarship from a couple of kid thugs, he also unexpectedly gains a new sidekick, who abandons his thesis on Beckett to write a biography of Galway’s most magnetic rogue.

Between pub crawls and violent outbursts, Jack’s vengeful plot against the professor soon spirals toward chaos. Enter Emerald, an edgy young Goth who could either be the answer to Jack’s problems, or the last ripped stitch in his undoing …

“Taylor is a classic figure: an ex-cop turned seedy private eye … The book’s pleasure comes from listening to Taylor’s eloquent rants, studded with references to songs and books. His voice is wry and bittersweet, but somehow always hopeful. ” —The Seattle Times

Green Hell

An Irish crime novel featuring ex-cop Jack Taylor from an author “among the most original and innovative noir voices of the last two decades” (Los Angeles Review of Books).
 
 In The Emerald Lie, the latest terror to be visited upon the dark Galway streets arrives in a most unusual form: a Cambridge graduate who becomes murderous over split infinitives, dangling modifiers, and any other sign of bad grammar. Meanwhile, Jack is approached by a grieving father with a pocketful of cash on offer if Jack will help exact revenge on those responsible for his daughter’s brutal rape and murder. Though hesitant to get involved, Jack agrees to get a read on the likely perpetrators.
 
 But Jack is soon derailed by the reappearance of Emily (previous alias: Emerald), the chameleon-like young woman who joined forces with Jack to take down her pedophile father in Green Hell and who remains passionate, clever, and utterly homicidal. She will use any sort of coercion to get Jack to conspire with her against the serial killer the Garda have nicknamed “the Grammarian,” but her most destructive obsession just might be Jack himself.
 
 “Nobody writes like Ken Bruen, with his ear for lilting Irish prose and his taste for the kind of gallows humor heard only at the foot of the gallows.” —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

The Emerald Lie

An ex-cop chases after a relic and a rogue priest: “They don’t come much tougher than Ken Bruen’s Irish roughneck, Jack Taylor.” —The New York Times Book Review

 Jack Taylor is recovering from a mistaken medical diagnosis and a failed suicide attempt. Now that he’s going to live after all, he’s going to need money, so using his ex-Garda credentials he manages to land a job as a night-shift security guard.

 But his Ukrainian boss has Jack in mind for a bit of off-the-books work. He wants Jack to find what some claim to be the first true book of heresy, the famously blasphemous “Red Book,” currently in the possession of a rogue priest hiding out in Galway after fleeing a position at the Vatican. Despite Jack’s distaste for priests of any stripe, the money is too good to turn down. Then Em, the many-faced woman who’s had a vise on Jack’s heart and mind for the past two years, reappears and turns out to be entangled with the story of the Red Book, too—leading Jack down ever more mysterious and lethal pathways—in this “dark and often hilarious” series by an author who’s won the Shamus, Macavity, and Barry Awards and been an Edgar Award finalist (Toronto Star).

 “Bruen is in top form, and, although everything Taylor touches seems to turn to ash, he embodies such humanity that readers will be unable to resist rooting for him.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

 “The most mannered prose since the glory days of James Ellroy.” —Kirkus Reviews

The Ghosts of Galway

A New York Times Best Mystery of the Year: A hard-drinking detective deals with double murder and an elusive vigilante.

 After much tragedy and violence, Jack Taylor has at long last landed at contentment. Of course, he still knocks back too much Jameson and dabbles in uppers, but he has a new woman in his life, a freshly bought apartment, and little sign of trouble on the horizon—until a wealthy Frenchman comes to him with a request to investigate the double murder of his twin sons.

 Jack is meanwhile roped into looking after his girlfriend’s nine-year-old, and is in for a shock with the appearance of a character out of his past. The plot is one big chess game and all of the pieces seem to be moving at the behest of one dangerously mysterious player: a vigilante called “Silence,” because he’s the last thing his victims will ever hear.

 This new novel filled with suspense and pitch-dark humor comes from a Shamus Award-winning author who’s been called “hard to resist, with his aching Irish heart, silvery tongue, and bleak noir sensibility” (TheNew York Times Book Review).
 
 “The Godfather of the modern Irish crime novel.”—Irish Independent

In the Galway Silence

“They don’t come much tougher than Ken Bruen’s Irish roughneck, Jack Taylor, ” and crime thrillers don’t get any better than this (The New York Times Book Review).

Jack Taylor has never quite been able get his life together, but now he has truly hit rock bottom. Still reeling from a violent family tragedy, Taylor is busy drowning his grief in Jameson and uppers, as usual, when a high-profile officer in the local Garda is murdered. After another Guard is found dead, and then another, Taylor’s old colleagues from the force implore him to take on the case. The plot is one big game, and all of the pieces seem to be moving at the behest of one dangerously mysterious team: a trio of young killers with very different styles, but who are united their common desire to take down Jack Taylor. Their ring leader is Jericho, a psychotic girl from Galway who is grieving the loss of her lover, and who will force Jack to confront some personal trauma from his past.

As sharp and sardonic as it is starkly bleak and violent, Galway Girl shows master raconteur Ken Bruen at his best: lyrical, brutal, and ceaselessly suspenseful.

Galway Girl

“They don’t come much tougher than Ken Bruen’s Irish roughneck, Jack Taylor, a man with bad habits who does good despite himself.”―Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
 
 Ex-cop-turned-PI Jack Taylor has finally escaped the despair of his violent life in Galway in favor of a quiet retirement in the country with his friend, a former Rolling Stones roadie, and a falcon named Maeve. But on a day trip back into the city to sort out his affairs, Jack is hit by a truck in front of Galway’s Famine Memorial, left in a coma but mysteriously without a scratch on him.

 When he awakens weeks later, he finds Ireland in a frenzy over the so-called “Miracle of Galway.” People have become convinced that the two children spotted tending to him are saintly, and the site of the accident sacred. The Catholic Church isn’t so sure, and Jack is commissioned to help find the children to verify the miracle—or expose the stunt.

 But Jack isn’t the only one looking for these children, and he’s about to plunge into a case involving an order of nuns, an arsonist, and a girl who may be more manipulative than miraculous. From the multiple Shamus Award winner known as “the Godfather of the modern Irish crime novel” (Irish Independent), this is a hard-edged, ceaselessly suspenseful mystery in the popular long-running series.

 “A Celtic Dashiell Hammett.”—Philadephia Inquirer