The Galway Epiphany by Ken Bruen

Published by Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press on November 3, 2020

A priest has an incurable disease that will ravish him before it leaves him dead. He wants to speed the process but it’s bad form for a priest to commit suicide. The priest asks Jack Taylor to kill him. When Taylor argues that murder is a mortal sin, the priest responds, “You have so many sins, will God notice?”

Taylor weighs the decision to kill the priest after a different priest confesses that he intends to kill a satanic child who, for a time, befriended Taylor. Such is Jack Taylor’s life. Those are only two of the plot threads that weave together in A Galway Epiphany.

Children are at the heart of the novel, both as abuse victims and as abusers. One of the villains in the story is burning down buildings, including one that might be occupied by kids. Another villain is a man who beats his six-year-old daughter. Another is a child whose bullying caused another child’s suicide. The remaining villain — the murderous child — is creating fake miracles that the gullible are only too happy to believe.

Taylor makes clear his disgust with a religion that fails to protect children from its priests. Still, he decides to go on something like a religious retreat where he will try to recharge while avoiding contact with nuns and priests. To the nun in charge, avoiding contact seems like a fine idea.

Taylor’s relationship with Catholicism is both strained and ambiguous. He is inclined to believe that all miracles are fake until he experiences one of his own. He’s hit by a car, wakes up from a coma with no serious injuries, and actually feels better than he has in years — until the novel’s end. Rarely does a Jack Taylor novel end well for Taylor. This one is no exception. Taylor might actually be on the verge of an epiphany until the last page. Like many of Ken Bruen’s last pages, it changes the narrative entirely.

Along the way, Taylor makes jaded and pithy comments about politics and praises a variety of crime writers, some of whom I’ve read and some I haven’t. Reading a Jack Taylor novel always makes my reading list grow.

I could complain that Taylor novels are formulaic but I like the formula. The books always move in sprints, occasionally pausing for Taylor to drink and exchange cross words with, well, everyone who speaks to him. Taylor’s dark struggles with whiskey and evil make him philosophical without being pedantic. He is one of the most troubled characters in crime fiction and, for that reason, among the most interesting. The Galway Epiphany is about average for a Jack Taylor novel, making my recommendation virtually automatic.

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