The Ghosts of Galway by Ken Bruen

Published by Mysterious Press on November 14, 2017

The Ghosts of Galway has several meanings in Ken Bruen’s novel of the same name, including Jack Taylor’s many departed friends, the Galwegians whose death he has caused or for which he blames himself, and a social protest movement that identifies itself by that name. The story’s local color includes the hated water tax and some dead swans, but Jack’s running commentary touches upon American politics, as well. He’s more interested, however, in American television, although politics is just another form of televised entertainment.

Jack is more concerned about his old demons than any new ghosts, but life never lets him take the back seat he so fervently hopes to occupy. Worried about his mortality after receiving an ambiguous diagnosis, Jack would like to patch up some friendships, but his old friends are having none of it. That leaves him with Emily, who in recent novels has been a dangerous friend. She’s even more dangerous in this one.

Jack is recruited to obtain The Red Book, purportedly written as a counterargument to The Book of Kells in about 800 A.D., if it exists at all. Jack loves to read but he doesn’t want his life to be the plot of a Dan Brown novel, so he decides to pass on the job until the paycheck convinces him otherwise.

The job should be easy since the book is for sale in Galway, having been pilfered from the Vatican library by a rogue priest. Of course, nothing is easy for Jack. Nor for his friends (although he has few), who have a tendency to die. Even former friends suffer death by association. In fact, everyone and everything Jack cares about dies. That tendency plagues Jack again in this novel. Each new death adds another layer of grief and guilt to his life, sending him deeper into the bottle, even as he tries to cope by pursuing his own form of makeshift justice. I don’t know if there’s another protagonist in crime fiction who has such a good heart and such an awful life as Jack Taylor.

Jack is in love not just with books but with language, and is fond of mocking young people who have (in his view) corrupted it with words like “basically,” an all-purpose single-word answer to any question. Bruen uses Taylor to spew forth a running commentary on popular culture, including writers and films and television shows he admires and those he could do without. My favorite moment in this book comes when Jack tries to pick up a woman in a bar by discussing the merits of an Irish writer and, when the woman says “I don’t read,” responds “What the f--- is wrong with you?” Of course, the woman walks away. Story of Jack’s life.

The Ghosts of Galway might best be viewed as an interlude. Bruen cleans up some plotlines that have dangled in the last two or three novels, presumably paving the way for something new. I’m glad Bruen did that, but as a cleanup novel, The Ghosts of Galway is less satisfying than some of his other work. Which isn’t to say that the novel can't be enjoyed for the reasons that every Bruen novel is enjoyable:  the pop culture references, the dry wit, the laconic writing style. Bruen’s novels are known for their brutal endings, and this one has two. Jack is not the victim of the first, but then another, less obvious brutal moment arrives, another downer to plague Jack’s life, and all is right with the world.

I wouldn’t recommend The Ghosts of Galway to anyone who hasn’t read other Jack Taylor novels, because it probably won’t seem to go anywhere. To the extent that the plot deals with The Red Book, it kind of fizzles out. I would, however, recommend reading the series in order from the beginning, because the full arc of Jack’s life is what the series is ultimately about. I don’t know where the next novel will go, since Jack has almost no friends (or even enemies) left in his life, but as always, I look forward to reading it.

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The Emerald Lie by Ken Bruen

Published by Mysterious Press (Grove/Atlantic) on August 30, 2016

At some point in The Emerald Lie, a character says, “I’m going to write a crime novel channeling David Foster Wallace, blend in the rules of grammar, have a broken-down PI, an enigmatic femme fatale, and oh, for the punters, a lovable scamp, as in the dog, not the PI.” Which pretty well sums up The Emerald Lie.

The Emerald Lie begins not long after Green Hell ends. Jack Taylor has made a lifestyle of devastation. In The Emerald Lie, he is trying to live quietly, taking his new dog for walks, enjoying his whiskey without a chaser of violence.

The father of a young woman who was brutally killed, apparently by someone who films torture porn, wants Jack to help him avenge the death. Jack has had enough of vengeance to know it makes nothing better, but he has a hard time saying no. His troubles continue when Emily, the crazed killer Ken Bruen introduced in Green Hell, returns to his life.

A second plotline involves a serial killer who selects his victims based on their grammatical errors. That’s a killer for whom I can root. The media call him The Grammarian. Making fun of a lethal grammar enforcer is probably Bruen’s way of thumbing his nose at critics who deplore his addiction to sentence fragments and unorthodox paragraph structures. Ridge, a character from past novels whose friendship with Jack often gives way to hatred, is investigating the killings.

Bruen always riddles his work with reference to popular culture. I give him credit for having the courage to say that some of the best American writing in the last couple of decades has come from television writers (Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and even, bless him, Battlestar Galactica), although he also praises some excellent crime novelists. In Green Hell, Bruen said that references to popular culture allow readers to connect to an author’s work. I would connect to Bruen anyway, on the strength of his honest characterizations of troubled people, but I also love the steady flow of song lyrics, movie references, and quotations from gifted genre writers who lack snob appeal.

As for Jack: “Desperation is its own beacon and I seemed to attract the worst and the worthless” pretty much sums up where he is in life. He carries so much guilt it is no surprise that he walks with a limp. Jack spends much of the novel reflecting on his tortured past, so readers who are familiar with the series might have more context in which to appreciate this novel than newcomers. Fortunately, Jack’s biting wit and pointed commentary on the surrounding world provides humor that balances the darkness of his life. Of course, Jack’s understanding of the world helps the reader understand Jack, which makes it possible to sympathize with a guy who has trashed his life and who continues to make sorrowful choices.

The plot in The Emerald Lie might not be as powerful as those Bruen crafted in some other novels in the series, but Bruen is always a joy to read. Clever prose, strong characterizations, and pointed observations more than make up for a meandering story, albeit one that works its way to a surprising finish. This is a book that Jack Taylor fans cannot miss. For others, I would suggest starting at the beginning and reading the novels in sequence, as Jack’s evolution from book to book is what makes this series one of the best in crime fiction.

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Green Hell by Ken Bruen

Published by Mysterious Press on July 7, 2015

I'm a fan of Ken Bruen's no-frills writing style, with its frequent references to pop culture, its creative use of foul language, and its striking visual arrangement of words on the page. Some pages consist of quotations from excellent crime novels and American television shows, broken into lines that reveal their poetry. Bruen takes on critics who complain that his books are for "people who don't read" by having a bartender opine, "How [censored] insulting is that to readers?"

Bruen knows that good writing can be found in movies and television shows and popular crime novels, not just in Nobel Prize winning fiction. Bruen's own crime fiction is a prime example. Descriptions of people and places are vivid, pointed, and mercifully short. Dialog is snappy. (My favorite snatch of dialog in Green Hell is this:

"I have a Kindle."
"And may God forgive you.")

The bartender suggests that the pop culture references "ground the story in stuff I know" but there's really no need for Bruen to defend himself. The quotations and lists are necessary amusements. They balance the pervasive darkness to which his characters are exposed, the unfairness that they were born to endure.

In Green Hell, an American named Boru Kennedy puts aside his dissertation on Beckett to write about Jack Taylor, the man who saved him from young thugs who were about to "kick the [censored] be-Jaysus out of this bollix." Taylor is well known to Bruen's fans as the former Guard who tries to steer his way through a crime-filled Galway that he typically perceives through an alcoholic and pill induced haze. Kennedy, fascinated with Taylor's combination of roguish charm and full throttle violence, decides to interview the people who know Taylor best, none of whom hold him in high regard. A former colleague who describes Taylor as "a spit in the Face" once thought that the light shone stronger in Taylor than the darkness. That person now thinks that Taylor has embraced the ugliness and brutality of life. Others are less kind.

Part I, which covers more than the first half of Green Hell, is Boru's take on Jack. In Part II ("Jack's Back"), Jack is again the narrative voice. But since the voice is always Bruen's, the change is one of perspective rather than style. Taylor's perspective is bleak. That the story takes place at Christmas only contributes to Taylor's grim mood. Part II also introduces a character who is even more messed up than is normal for the series. I suspect she will resurface in later installments.

Apart from its biographical content -- the latest installment in the story of Jack -- a plot occasionally surfaces, having to do with a woman Boru starts dating and an academic who physically abuses his female students. The plot takes a sharp turn and finally comes into focus in Part II. It soon becomes clear why the story's perspective has changed.

Green Hell didn't pick me up and throw me down a flight of stairs like some of Bruen's novels, although it delivered Bruen's characteristic knockout punch at the end. This is a worthy installment in Jack Taylor's life. The greatest joy in reading these novels lies in knowing (knock on wood) that my life will never be as bad as Jack's.

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A White Arrest by Ken Bruen

First published in the UK in 1998; published digitally by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Media on December 18, 2012

Although A White Arrest could be characterized as a police procedural, there is little police work and almost no detection on display. It might be better to think of A White Arrest as a crime novel. A White Arrest features plenty of crime, at least half of it committed by the police. Fundamentally, though, A White Arrest is a stark examination of three characters, all cops: Roberts, Brant, and Falls.

Neither Chief Inspector Roberts nor Detective Sergeant Brant are exemplary law enforcement officers. Roberts and Brant are likely to get sacked if they don't pull off a white arrest, the sort of legendary, career-making, front page arrest that guarantees lifetime employment. Their best chance would be to catch a serial killer known as The Umpire, who has been murdering cricket players. Another possibility would be to arrest the members of the E crew, a four person gang dedicated to killing dealers and stealing their drugs.

While Ken Bruen gives the reader a peek into the disturbed minds of The Umpire and the leader of the E crew, Bruen gives most of his attention to the cops, particularly Brant, whose mind is as unsettled as those of the criminals he's half-heartedly trying to catch. Brant is the jerk of all jerks, the kind of cop who takes bribes, steals money, abuses suspects, and stiffs the pizza delivery guy. When he isn't sexually harassing female officers, Brant is getting liquor on credit from the off-licence shop (a debt he never intends to pay), watching The Simpsons, and reading Ed McBain novels. He also fantasizes about shagging Roberts' wife, Fiona. Roberts certainly isn't getting satisfaction from Fiona, who (egged on by her friend Penny) has it on with a boytoy she hires at a club that caters to women of "a certain age."

Susan Falls is a female constable who joined the force to escape from a troubled family, only to find that the police are themselves a troubled family. Falls yearns for love. Sadly for her, she's in a Ken Bruen novel, where love is a scarce commodity.

As you'd expect from Bruen, A White Arrest is riddled with quotations from crime novels and movies (although the Umpire tends to quote Shakespeare, always a good source when it comes to murder). The novel's brisk pace and penetrating prose make it a quick read. Don't expect much in the way of plot, and don't expect the police to do anything that might actually solve a crime. Roberts and Brant don't always catch the bad guy, and when they do manage to make an arrest, it's more a function of luck than effort. A White Arrest isn't a novel for someone who wants a traditional police procedural filled with hard-working, likable cops. For readers who are intrigued by flawed characters living gritty lives, A White Arrest is -- like all of Bruen's novels -- meaty entertainment.

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The Dramatist by Ken Bruen

First published in 2004

The Dramatist is the fourth in a series of novels that chronicle the struggles of Jack Taylor, adding depth to Bruen's well drawn character, a fired cop and recovering alcoholic turned half-hearted private investigator in Galway. The prose style established in the companion novels continues here: clean, concise, and forceful. The plot includes a literary twist: Taylor's former (now imprisoned) drug dealer asks him to investigate the death of a college student found with a broken neck, a copy of The Playboy of the Western World under her body.

Like the other Jack Taylor novels, the plot is secondary to the drama that unfolds in Taylor's life, and there's plenty of it here, involving his mother, who lives in a dilapidated nursing home, his ex-wife, whose jealous new husband gives Taylor a beating, and the bartender who is one of his only true friends until that relationship sours. Along the way Taylor is suspected of murder, experiences violence at the hands of an extremist group called the Pikemen, and engages in a bit of violence himself while struggling to maintain his precarious sobriety. Then, just when you think nothing worse could happen to poor Jack, there's a sudden, shocking ending that would seem manipulative or forced in the hands of a lesser talent.

The novel moves at such a furious pace you might find yourself stopping now and then to catch your breath. Those breaks provide time to wonder just how much pain Jack can endure -- and whether he'll ever make for himself the life of peace and decency he craves. I can't help cheering for him and at the same time wondering what he'll encounter in the next novel.

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