This image is the cover for the book Ghosts of Galway, The Jack Taylor Novels

Ghosts of Galway, The Jack Taylor Novels

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

Ken Bruen

Ken Bruen (b. 1951) is one of the most prominent Irish crime writers of the last two decades. Born in Galway, he spent twenty-five years traveling the world before he began writing in the mid 1990s. As an English teacher, Bruen worked in South Africa, Japan, and South America, where he once spent a short time in a Brazilian jail. He has two long-running series: one starring a disgraced former policeman named Jack Taylor, the other a London police detective named Inspector Brant. Praised for their sharp insight into the darker side of today’s prosperous Ireland, Bruen’s novels are marked by grim atmosphere and clipped prose. Among the best known are his White Trilogy (1998–2000) and The Guards (2001), the Shamus award-winning first novel in the Jack Taylor series. Bruen continues to live and work in Galway.

Grove Atlantic