The Ghosts of Galway: 14 (Jack Taylor Novels) - Hardcover

Praise for The Ghosts of Galway

"[Bruen] writes short, rat-a-tat sentences that suggest a meeting of Samuel Beckett and Ogden Nash . . . For all of Taylor's affectations, his confessions of guilt and regret can be downright lyrical."--Chicago Tribune

"[A] dark and often hilarious . . . series."--Toronto Star

"One does not read Ken Bruen to be uplifted and hopeful for humanity. One reads him for the stylistic beauty of his prose and his ability to capture powerful emotion in few words. That is especially true of his latest mystery, The Ghosts of Galway. This is an intense read where the past and the toll this mortal coil takes on the living is the story from the first to the last page . . . Blending pop culture references and a steady pace with the mystery, author Ken Bruen creates an intense and very emotional read. The Ghosts of Galway is a very good book and one you should read."--Killer Nashville

"Bruen's prose has the immediacy you would expect from a noir novel. Many people are choosing non-genre fiction to help them deal with the current horrific political reality, but books like The Ghosts of Galway, and noir specifically, should really be at the top of their reading lists. Noir is uniquely capable of responding to the intersections of criminality and politics, of sucking the grime to the surface while pulling the seamy superstructure back down to earth. While Bruen doesn't offer much hope or solutions, there is nothing fake in his unfiltered vision of our violent world."--Lucas Spiro, Arts Fuse

"Bruen is in top form, and, although everything Taylor touches seems to turn to ash, he embodies such humanity that readers will be unable to resist rooting for him."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"No one writes like Ken Bruen . . . Brilliantly and darkly told, a sweet mother's milk that is terminally poisonous but nearly irresistible after one taste. It does not take an especially long time to read, but should be lingered over. Once you are finished, you will want to visit or revisit its predecessors, as the case may be, in order to prepare yourself for the next installment. But be ready to have your skull fractured and your heart broken."--Bookreporter

"Jack Taylor is easily one of the most compelling protagonists in modern crime fiction."--BookPage

"Events unfold in the most mannered prose since the glory days of James Ellroy against the distant echoes of Donald Trump's shockingly successful presidential campaign . . . Dispensing with the genre's customary pleasures . . . Bruen still manages to deliver prose that's both tough and elegiac."--Kirkus Reviews

"Galway is darker than ever here, and the ghosts that haunt Jack--all the people he ever cared for--grow in number."--Booklist

"Bruen's visceral writing and anger (at politicians and clergy) brings a fierce, almost surreal intensity to this mad story of a missing heretical book, stolen from the Vatican, that turns up in Galway."--Metro News (UK), "The killer thrillers: it's been a great year for crime novels"

Praise for Ken Bruen and the Jack Taylor series:

"Nobody writes like Ken Bruen, with his ear for lilting Irish prose and his taste for the kind of gallows humor heard only at the foot of the gallows. The Emerald Lie is pure Bruen, with its verbal tics, weird typography and unorthodox wordplay."--Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review, on The Emerald Lie

"Taylor is a classic figure: an ex-cop turned seedy private eye . . . The book's pleasure comes from listening to Taylor's eloquent rants, studded with references to songs and books. His voice is wry and bittersweet, but somehow always hopeful."--Adam Woog, Seattle Times, on Green Hell

"Bruen's voice is unmistakable: finely chiseled paragraphs that more closely resemble verse than prose . . . Bleaker than David Goodis, colder than Derek Raymond, and funnier and more violent than Richard Stark, Ken Bruen is among the most original and innovative noir voices of the last two decades."--Los Angeles Review of Books, on Headstone

"One of the most sublime pleasures in crime fiction is reading a new book by Ken Bruen. For almost twenty years now, he's been delighting mystery and noir audiences with his stunning, poetic books of the shadowy side of life . . . This is real writing, the likes of which we are blessed to behold."--David J. Montgomery, Strand Magazine, on Purgatory

"No one writes crime novels quite like Ken Bruen . . . I picture Bruen not so much writing as transcribing the words of a sweet fallen angel that are whispered feverishly into his ear."--Joe Hartlaub, Bookreporter, on The Emerald Lie

"Bruen gets more done in a paragraph, a word, even a fragment of a word, than most writers get in an entire four-hundred-page doorstop. If his prose was any sharper, your eyeballs would bleed."--Mystery Scene, on Green Hell

"The Godfather of the modern Irish crime novel."--Irish Independent, on Green Hell

"Bruen is brilliant."--Galway Advertiser (Ireland), on The Emerald Lie

Ken Bruen is a singular voice in crime fiction “with his ear for lilting Irish prose and his taste for the kind of gallows humor heard only at the foot of the gallows” (New York Times Book Review). In The Ghosts of Galway, he brings those elegiac talents to bear on a case involving a famously blasphemous red book and Bruen’s equally profane antihero Jack Taylor.

As well-versed in politics, pop culture, and crime fiction as he is ill-fated in life, Jack Taylor is recovering from a mistaken medical diagnosis and a failed suicide attempt. In need of money, and with former cop on his resume, Jack has been hired as a night-shift security guard. But his Ukrainian boss has Jack in mind for a bit of off-the-books work. He wants Jack to find what some claim to be the first true book of heresy, The Red Book, currently in the possession of a rogue priest who is hiding out in Galway after fleeing a position at the Vatican. Despite Jack’s distaste for priests of any stripe, the money is too good to turn down. Em, the many-faced woman who has had a vise on Jack’s heart and mind for the past two years, reappears and turns out to be entangled with the story of The Red Book, too, leading Jack down ever more mysterious and lethal pathways.

It seems all sides are angling for a piece of Jack Taylor, but as The Ghosts of Galway twists toward a violent end, he is increasingly plagued by ghosts—by the disposable and disposed of in a city filled with as much darkness as the deepest corners of Jack’s own mind.