Although I had collected Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor series of Irish noir fiction for years, it wasn't until I watched the fine show on Netflix, "Jack Taylor," that I decided to give the novels a go. For the last two weeks I have been catching up and found that reading each one of them has been a sublime pleasure. I could not stop reading.
This is crime fiction of a high order. For almost twenty years now, the author has been delighting mystery fans with his stunning, poetic books about the shadowy side of life in Galway. With the tortured alcoholic soul of Jack Taylor he shows that even in the barrooms, "there are poets among us." Sometimes their voices can be mighty and fierce.
Gleefully profane, grimly hilarious, and joyfully blasphemous, the prose in this series is so unapologetically lyrical and right that it sometimes hurts to read on. Ken Bruen captures the pervasive brooding Irish landscape better than any author currently writing. From the first in the series, The Guards down to Purgatory, the latest, they had me hooked and I am so glad I got to finally read them.
