Jack Taylor
Created by Ken Bruen

Ex-cop JACK TAYLOR may not be good at much, but he does seem to have a talent for substance abuse and finding things. So when his arse is kicked off Ireland's national police force, the Garda Siochna, for his excessive drinking and his tendency to shoot off his mouth, he decides to become a private eye in Galway ("the dirtiest city in Ireland")..

Not that alcoholic P.I.s are particularly original, but somehow Bruen manages to make the many cliches of the genre come alive in The Guards (2001), Taylor's astounding and audacious debut. They're all here, too: the beautiful client who may be hiding something, the brooding tough but tender P.I. who seeks solace in booze and books and drugs, the missing daughter, the mordant wisecracks, etc.

The fact is that, stereotypes or not, Jack's simply a great character, an often self-pitying, obnoxious drunk overly impressed with his own wit who's often way out of his league, and not above using some very questionable methods. He's not even that good a detective, it turns out. A veritable flood of literary quotations and music trivia spewing from his mouth, he bumbles around, often doing more harm than good, as he works the case, not always sure what he's doing. And Jack's harsh, bleek Galway is a far cry from the over-romanticized pastoral paradise described in song every March by a bunch of weepy-eyed fools in green plastic bowler hats in pre-fab and swilling green beer in "Irish" pubs all across North America.

Somehow Bruen pulls it off. The Guards, at almost 300 pages, is full of tricky punctuation and excess quotations that should sink the book. Fortunately, Bruen's muscular storytelling and spot-on, razor sharp prose cuts through the fat, and reveals the meat underneath. And the subsequent books in this series have just raised the stakes.

According to the Tangled Web, "Ken Bruen hails from the west of Ireland and lives in south London. His past includes drunken brawls in Vietnam, a stretch of four months in a South American gaol, a PhD in metaphysics and three of the most acclaimed crime novels of the '90s: Rilke on Black, The Hackman Blues and Her Last Call To Louis McNeice. He was a finalist for the First Blood award for Best First Crime Novel of '95 (for Rilke on Black) and was a front runner in the Big Issue's 'alternative' Booker shortlist."

All I know is that you better keep your eye on Bruen. He's a contender. If you see 'em, buy him a drink.

UNDER OATH

• "An elegiac novel of despair and redemption. Bleak, amoral and disturbing, The Guards breaks new ground in the Irish thriller genre."
  (Irish Independent)

THE EVIDENCE

• "My glass was empty, echoing my heart."
  -- Priest

NOVELS

• The Guards (2001)..Buy this book
• The Killing of the Tinkers (2002)..Buy this book
• The Magdalen Martyrs  (2003)..Buy this book
• The Dramatist (2004)..Buy this book
• Priest (2007).. Buy this book
• Cross (2008).. Buy this book

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.