The Magdalen Martyrs

"The Magdalen Martyrs" is the third book in Ken Bruen's addicting (pun intended) Jack Taylor series and for me it was the book that finally caught me up on the series to-date. I mention this only because of the way my knowledge of the future of a few of the characters in "The Magdalen Martyrs" might have affected my reaction to the roles they play in this book. Jack Taylor, by many standards, is an awful man. He is no stranger to violence - an alcoholic, a user of hard drugs both recreationally (including during sex) and to escape his troubles, not a man to be taken lightly. By other standards, though, Jack is a good and an interesting man. He will not walk blindly past a father publicly abusing his child; he respects the elderly for their experience; he is loyal to the core when it comes to old friends and old haunts; he is a literate man who knows history and loves books as much as physical objects as for what is inside them. Jack is also smart enough to know that he has caused most of his own problems in life but not smart enough to change the habits that keep him in so much trouble. When Bill Cassell, an Irish mobster to whom Jack owes a personal favor, asks him to find the woman who helped Cassell's mother escape the old Magdalen laundry decades earlier, Jack gets busy because he knows that no one refuses Bill Cassell and lives to talk about it. The Magdalen, once a church-run home for promiscuous young women, was staffed by nuns, one of whom, in particular, took delight in physically abusing the girls as punishment for their promiscuity. A few of the girls died at this woman's hands, so to have escaped the Magdalen for a new life on the outside was akin to a clean jailbreak. "The Magdalen Martyrs" is about fighting demons and there is no one better equipped to battle demons than Jack Taylor, be they demons from the present, from his past, or even from before he was born. Taylor, while simultaneously working two separate investigations, confronts the evils of the long-gone Magdalen laundry, his own multiple addictions, his violent temper, his intense hatred of his elderly mother, and his contempt for his mother's pet priest, the odious Father Malachy - among other demons. As always, a Jack Taylor novel is more about the man than the cases he works - exactly what keeps fans of the series coming back for more. Despite his many flaws, Jack Taylor is an easy man to like, and I wholeheartedly recommend the entire Jack Taylor series to readers who enjoy delving into an intriguing character to the depth that a long series, such as this one has become, allows. Readers with the stomach for dark, hardcore action simply will not want to miss Jack Taylor.

By now, I have read most of the Jack Taylor and Inspector Brant books. I discovered them recently, and have devoured them greedily. While I am drawn to the Brant novels for the cast of truly nasty cops in the relatively familiar setting of London, I have ultimately found the Taylor series to be more satisfying, while no less cynical. Jack Taylor, an ex-cop, carries on a heroic battle with his inner demons while attempting to scrounge a living (and mete out his own brand of justice) as a private detective in his home town of Galway, Ireland. While the books clearly belong to the crime genre, it is unusual to find such a deep and articulate exploration of a troubled soul and a constantly changing environment outside of literary fiction - especially in books that can easily be read in an evening. The Magdalen Martyrs may be my favorite in the series. There is a clear order to the books, and this is not the first. I have read them out of sequence, as little information is provided on the covers, but I do not believe I have suffered as a result. In The Magdalen Martyrs, Taylor is fighting his alcoholism, drug addictions and ageing process as usual, but perhaps describes them more eloquently in this book. "An alcoholic must be charming. He has to keep making new friends, as he is constantly losing his old ones." The mystery ties in to the conflict between the new, ambitiously modern Galway and the closely-knit community that it was in Taylor's youth. Of course, the Catholic Church is involved, and, as always, the characters are hugely colorful. "You know you are a mess when a priest shouts abuse at you on the street." Taylor discovers just enough information to reveal injustices on several levels. He deals with those that affect him directly in a very personal manner, while reacting more creatively to those that merely outrage him. I hope I haven't made this book sound dull with my plodding description, but the entire story was accompanied by the sound effects of my grunts of encouragement, mumbles of sympathy and subdued whoops of triumph on Taylor's behalf. You should really try this great book, and the others in the series.

Raw, brutal, and unrepentant, Ken Bruen rips another bleak but gripping tale of the unlikely hero Jack Taylor, the alcoholic and well-read ex-Guard of Galway, Ireland. The title refers to the Magdalen laundry, a sweatshop for unwed young mother's run by Ireland's ubiquitous Catholic Church. Bill Cassell, a notorious Galway hard guy, calls on Jack to return a favor. Cassell's mother, is turns out, was a "Maggie", one of the girls abused in this infamous laundry and Cassell wants Jack to track down a woman who was supposedly kind to mum in those dark days. Simple and straightforward - everything that Bruen's writing is not. Ken Bruen's power is not in the plot, but in the delivery. If poetry could be written with a broken-off beer bottle, this would be the end result. While told in the author's patented sparse prose liberally peppered with bullet-point thoughts - as if not to be bothered wasting the reader's time for the effort and thought required for sentences and paragraphs - Bruen manages to weave a tale of staggering complexity, a thoughtful and unforgettable story of Irish culture, the Church, despair, and the depths to which human nature can plunge. Vicariously through Taylor, Bruen neatly skewers the Church while at the same time reverently finding strength and some peace under cathedral's roofs, a pardox inescapable but defining in Bruen's works. One word of advice: while certainly not required to be read in sequence, "The Magdalen Martyrs" lays some important groundwork for the storylines in the equally powerful sequels, "The Dramatist" and "Priest". But in whatever order you chose, just read them - Ken Bruen continues to set new standards for crime fiction which have already influenced a tight circle of talented new writers - Swierczynski, Huston, Stella among them - Bruen's fiction will be regarded as the classics of our days just as Chandler, Thompson, Hammet, and McBain are revered today.

I suppose what Ken Bruen is able to mine is a palpable sense of 'there but for the grace of God go I,' or other Irish-Italian-Jewish axioms grandmas all over the world whispered to grand kids. The prose is tight, the action swift, the confusion greater as the plot unfolds than in the beginning, and we really don't want Jack Taylor to have that next drink or next line or next joint. Because we know what it does. Because we know what it does to him. Because he knows what it does to him. The search for the Magdelene murders-martyrs-perps might be pandering in say Chicago or New York, but it sure makes sense in Galway. And as Jack searches deeper he begins to appreciate .and share with us its horrors. I have no problem with the writing. Excellent. Taylor beating on his mother gets tiresome. The relationship he has with Father Malachy reminds me of Clint Eastwood's Frankie Dunn, but of course Jack Taylor would run over the Pastor and his mother if he had the chance. Frankie Dunn wouldn't. Good writing. Sad story. I guess Jack Taylor and Ken Bruen have a niche in writing about drunks. Funny thing is, they usually die. 5 stars. Larry scantlebury

Ken Bruen's unique style gets sharper and grittier with each new book. THE MAGDALEN MARTYRS, his third Jack Taylor novel, cements him as an enormous talent and fresh voice among Irish writers. The smart-mouthed, self-destructive Taylor, an ex-Garda, still retains his Garda jacket. Jack refuses to acknowledge the periodic letter demanding the return of said jacket, to wit Item No. 8234, mostly because he doesn't play by anybody's rules but his own. When common wisdom suggests one course of action, Jack nearly always takes the opposite direction. In Bruen's latest tale, Galway tough guy Bill Cassell calls up for repayment of a favor he did Jack a while back, and Cassell is not the kind of guy you say no to. It sounds simple, really. Cassell wants to find one Rita Monroe --- an ancient nun who worked at the Magdalen, a one-time home for young women "in trouble" --- to thank her, he says, for her kindness to his mother. Delighted to be off the hook for so altruistic a task, Jack starts making inquiries. But he should have remembered the old adage: If it seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Just the mention of the Magdalen causes doors to slam and conversations to shut down. Not one person sings its praises or mourns its closure. The more Jack learns about it, the less he understands his mission. And Cassell keeps the pressure on. While conducting his investigation, a couple of seemingly random murders occur, but Jack is too involved in his return to booze and drugs to make a connection. He floats along in his chemical euphoria --- surprisingly staying alive, but not out of jail. Interspersed with actually endeavoring to find Rita Monroe, he struggles with personal tragedy, finds himself enjoying some energetic sex (with just about the worst partner he could have chosen) and continues to terrorize his mother's good friend, Fr. Malachy, when his mother isn't available firsthand. Even with the many pitfalls and backslides that plague him, Jack somehow manages to solve the mystery, but he still finds it hard to get back into anyone's good graces. Jack Taylor ultimately is a likable character, despite attempts on his part to be anything but agreeable. Supremely tight writing and razor-edged dialogue spin you through the pages. As is always the case with any Ken Bruen book, THE MAGDALEN MARTYRS is much too short. --- Reviewed by Kate Ayers