The Killing of the Tinkers

I don't hail from Middle Earth, as one of the previous reviewers, nor do I even care to vacation there, but I am a fan of both noir and quality writing. Ergo, I think this is one terrific book. The great thing about noir (well, all novels really) is that plots do not necessarily need to be complex to be gripping. It is the characters, especially the protagonist, who need to be complex. And, oh, my, is Jack Taylor one complex, messed-up, messed-about dude. Oddly, his drug use did not put me off, as such action often does with fictional characters (and is only one reason why I detest O'Brian's Stephen Maturin character). Rather, it really brought home to me what a sad mess Jack is, what crutches he is willing to limp around on rather than seek and practice medical/psychological help, and how he is a willing assistant to the creation and maintenance of the darkness in which he dwells...and pulls others down alongside him. I had not read any of the Jack Taylor books prior to this one (and I'll be prompt about remedying that!) but I have read the Brant books by Ken Bruen, and I was delighted to see Brant make a lengthy appearance here, albeit under the name of Keegan. I hope Jack returns to London, I'd love to see him operating on Brant's turf. Jack has more conscience than Brant/Keegan, which may make him more likeable, but also leaves him more vulnerable. Bruen gives us a nicely dark, twisty ending, and left me wondering whether maybe Jack had less conscience than I thought. One last note, on the lit and music cited or referenced in the book: If you don't like these, and don't understand why they permeate the book, then you have my pity. They don't require explanation, but rather exploration. And if you explore, then I don't pity you, I understand you.

The second novel in Bruen's series about the down-and-out Jack Taylor, ex-cop, sometime private detective, fulltime alcoholic, reading addict--with the new addition of coke to his arsenal-- practically starts where THE GUARDS left off without much of a break. It's almost as if you were reading a continuation of the previous novel. Taylor is hired this time to find the killers of a group of tinkers; his second assignment is to catch whoever is decapitating the swans in Galway. Taylor's world view is as bleak as December weather. His friends Cathy and Jeff have a child born with Down's syndrome, an example of sorrow gone to seed. I would be over his constant bout with the bottle if he weren't so literate about it all. He's read everybody: Dylan Thomas, Anne Sexton, Robert Frost, Seamus Heaney, Harry Crews, Raymond Chandler. The list goes on and on. He says "my life and certainly my sanity had fled to reading through a thousand dark days." Taylor hates his mother, is not very successful in love and is often makes very bad judgments in his attempts to solve the tinker murders. He sometimes waxes eloquent, however, and you become besotted with him. A suit he got from Vincent de Paul wasn't purchased with him in mind. And his description of Kris Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down" as the ultimate "alky anthem" is worth the price of the book. The ending will blow you away!

Believable, in-your-face, and real; you are there, sitting across the table, eavesdropping at the next bar stool. It leaps off every page and makes you part of Jack Taylor's world. I was grabbed from the first sentence of the first page by the self-destructive soul of Jack Taylor; a soul that could only be cauterized by alcohol and cocaine. Yes, that's dark. But it's too narrow an assessment. If you have a dark side ( and how many of us have, if we're honest) you will find a memory or two in the lost evenings and anguished mornings of Jack Taylor. But where there is dark, there must also be light. And that light is there, perhaps dim at times, but it's there. It's there in the women who love him, in the people who still trust him, in the friends who care for him, in himself too: his ability to pick himself up again, his sense of justice, his attempts to find and punish the evil ones. There's the humour too, always there, black humour maybe, but it's the fabric that saves Jack Taylor and the people who populate Ken Bruen's Galway from absolute despair. Yes, Jack Taylor finds his anaesthetic in cocaine and alcohol. But he also finds it in books. It seems at times that he could just as easily be tempted into Charlie Byrne's as into his local pub. If you love to read (and I suspect you wouldn't be reading this unless you do) you'll be able to 'stack' Jack Taylor's selections on your own book shelves as you get lost in this dark trek through the netherworld of Galway. Maybe Ken Bruen is doing for Galway what Joyce did for Dublin in Ulysses: giving us a map of a Galway that is rapidly disappearing under the paws of the Celtic Tiger. That's it. Buy the book, tell your friends, buy some more................

"Leaving Galway, I'd left behind a string of deaths.... The investigation had led to.... Three murders. Four, if you count my best friend. My heart being hammered. Tons of cash. Exile."Jack's back. Wisecracking ex-Garda Jack Taylor is back in Galway after a spell in London. He's brought little more than a coke habit back with him. Now, hanging out at his new favorite pub (defined: one that still allows him in), he tries to reclaim his drinking habit too. While he would prefer nothing more than to nurse a pint --- or, better yet, several pints --- and drown the woes of his Irish past, trouble finds him sitting there on that stool.A tinker named Sweeper seeks him out and invokes a name from a death Jack looked into, the one that sent him fleeing Galway at the end of THE GUARDS. Jack tries to brush him off, but finds himself unable to turn away.I said, "Call me if you need anything.""I need one thing, Jack Taylor.""Name it.""Find whoever's killing my people."Sweeper tells Jack of several deaths among the young tinkers, and of the Garda's response: none. They're only tinkers, after all. He pays Jack well to find the killer. Whether Jack is actually up to the task is debatable at best.There's always more to Jack Taylor's days than the pursuit of clues. He has friends with crises, strangers with more crises, and an abundance of his own personal crises. Most times, he faces all of these by getting drunk. To his credit, he manages to solve the mystery, despite some rather untidy side effects. The bulk of the entertainment isn't in Jack's sleuthing abilities, though, but in his interactions with others, be they friend, foe, authority figure, mom, wife, girlfriend, lad or lass. He is one idiosyncratic character, full of acerbic quotes: "Lord knows, feeling bad is the skin I've worn almost all my life." Ken Bruen's dubious "hero" is the epitome of a guy you love to hate. Worse, though, he's the guy you hate to love, which you definitely do, at least in his role as the caustic, reluctant PI.Last year I read THE GUARDS, wherein Bruen introduced Jack Taylor. I have spent many long months waiting for the second, all-too-short, installment of Taylor's adventures. Bruen writes with a unique, if unconventional, style that I find refreshing. Once you get into this book's rhythm, I think you will find it hard to return to stories with long, flowing sentences and showy descriptions. What a voice this author has! Not pretty, not happy, not uplifting, but tragically comedic and highly addictive. --- Reviewed by Kate Ayers