Galway Girl
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4.3 • 38 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
"They don't come much tougher than Ken Bruen's Irish roughneck, Jack Taylor," and crime thrillers don't get any better than this (The New York Times Book Review).
Jack Taylor has never quite been able get his life together, but now he has truly hit rock bottom. Still reeling from a violent family tragedy, Taylor is busy drowning his grief in Jameson and uppers, as usual, when a high-profile officer in the local Garda is murdered. After another Guard is found dead, and then another, Taylor's old colleagues from the force implore him to take on the case. The plot is one big game, and all of the pieces seem to be moving at the behest of one dangerously mysterious team: a trio of young killers with very different styles, but who are united their common desire to take down Jack Taylor. Their ring leader is Jericho, a psychotic girl from Galway who is grieving the loss of her lover, and who will force Jack to confront some personal trauma from his past.
As sharp and sardonic as it is starkly bleak and violent, Galway Girl shows master raconteur Ken Bruen at his best: lyrical, brutal, and ceaselessly suspenseful.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Take a trip through Ireland’s darkest, most dangerous streets in Ken Bruen’s stunning Jack Taylor crime series. This installment follows the hard-drinking, bitterly cynical private investigator as he investigates the deaths of three local police officers at the hands of a savage ring of killers. The group’s leader—the unhinged Jericho—has her sights set on Taylor’s destruction. Like all the best noirs, the story is as much about Taylor facing the demons in his own brutal past as it is about his efforts to untangle the mystery. Grim, unsparingly vicious in its violence, and laced with dashes of pitch-black humor, Galway Girl is the work of a master at the height of his powers. Bruen’s book grabbed us by the throat and never let go.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Bruen's superior 15th Jack Taylor novel (after 2018's In the Galway Silence), killers stalk PI Taylor, once a member of the Garda, through Galway. Jericho, a femme fatale for whom "everyone was the enemy," cracks the whip on her fellow psychos as they roam the city gunning down members of the Garda to grab Jack's attention. Soon enough it gets personal with the fatal stabbing of a nun known to Taylor. Abrupt violence and plot twists keep the action popping, as Bruen plays his story like a series of brilliant improvisational jazz solos. Cultural references punctuate the narrative for example, the first paragraph from Hammett's The Maltese Falcon is dropped in as a free-form poem. For the finale, Bruen brings in a new character, the capable and deadly Keefer, once a roadie for the Rolling Stones, thereby balancing the odds so that Jack might live to drink Jameson another day. Bruen reinforces his place as the master of Irish noir.
