Somewhere in the teeming heart of London is a man on a lethal mission. His cause: a long-overdue lesson on the importance of manners. When a man gives a public tongue-lashing to a misbehaving child, or a parking lot attendant is rude to a series of customers, the "Manners Killer" makes sure...Read more
cross /kr�s/ n., v., & adj.
1 an ancient instrument of torture
2 in a very bad humour
3 a punch thrown across an opponent's punch
Jack Taylor brings...Read more
When a letter containing a list of victims arrives in the post, P.I. Jack Taylor tells himself that it’s got nothing to do with him. He has enough to do just staying sane. His close friend Ridge is recovering from surgery, and alcohol’s siren song is calling to him ever more insistently....Read more
Seems impossible, but Jack Taylor is sober---off booze, pills, powder, and nearly off cigarettes, too. The main reason he's been able to keep his dealer's in jail, which leaves Jack without a source. When that dealer calls him to Dublin and asks a favor in the soiled, sordid visiting room...Read more
Ireland, awash with cash and greed, no longer turns to the Church for solace or comfort. But the decapitation of Father Joyce in a Galway confessional horrifies even the most jaded citizen.
Jack Taylor, devastated by the recent trauma of personal loss, has always believed...Read more
Jack Taylor is walking the delicate edge of a sobriety he doesn't trust when his phone rings. He's in debt to a Galway tough named Bill Cassell, what the locals call a "hard man." Bill did Jack a big favor a while back; the trouble is, he never lets a favor go unreturned.
Jack is...Read more
When Jack Taylor blew town at the end of The Guards his alcoholism was a distant memory and sober dreams of a new life in London were shining in his eyes. In the opening pages of The Killing of the Tinkers, Jack's back in Galway a year later with a new leather jacket on...Read more
A serial killer is picking off members of the England cricket team, and in the dark and violent world of Brixton a vigilante group is hanging dope dealers from lamp-posts. Both Roberts and Brant are in hot water with their chief and they need something big to get them out of it. They...Read more
Still stinging from his unceremonious ouster from the Garda Síochána—the Guards, Ireland’s police force—and staring at the world through the smoky bottom of his beer mug, Jack Taylor is stuck in Galway with nothing to look forward to. In his sober moments Jack aspires to become Ireland’s...Read more
Yesterday Andrew Nette, on BlueSky, posted a link out about the death of the Irish Author Ken Bruen. Only 74 years old, had led a life no two ways about that, and wrote some of the most wonderful, dry, noir...Read more
When your favourite authors start dying even the most reasonable reader should be forgiven for becoming a nervous, obsessed, idiot hoarder of books that can, after all, be re-read should the unthinkable eventuate. Despite an overwhelming desire to continue this hoarding behaviour,...Read more
Where Do I Begin?
Ken Bruen writes in his own form of poetry.
The words pull no punches.
His characters make no apologies.
They will do as they damn well please and sometimes there are simply not enough good guys to go around....Read more
Michael O'Shea is a member of Ireland's police force, known as the Guards. He's also a sociopath who walks a knife-edge between sanity and all-out mayhem. When an exchange program is initiated and twenty Guards come to America and twenty cops from the States go to Ireland, Shea, as he's...Read more
Jack Taylor is changing. Shattered by the shooting of Cody, the young man who came to him for a chance, Jack feels for Cody like a man would for his natural son. Cody is comatose in hospital and even though he didn't pull the trigger, Jack feels responsible for Cody's fate. This has given...Read more
Jack is in all sorts of self-inflicted trouble again. He's in hospital, severely affected by a nervous breakdown, after his negligence caused the death of someone very very important to him and his last close friends, when he's bought back from the brink by the kindness of another patient...Read more