The award-winning crime writer Ken Bruen, called “the best-kept literary secret in Ireland” by the Independent, is as joyously unapologetic in his writing as he is wickedly poetic, mixing high and low with hypnotic mastery.In the previous book in the series, Purgatory, ex-cop Jack Taylor had finally turned his life around, only to be taunted back into fighting Galway’s corruption by a twisted serial killer named C33.In the new novel Green Hell, Bruen’s dark angel of a protagonist has again hit rock bottom: one of his best friends is dead, the other has stopped speaking to him; he has given up battling his addiction to alcohol and pills; and his firing from the Irish national police, the Guards, is ancient history. But Jack isn’t about to embark on a self-improvement plan. Instead, he has taken up a vigilante case against a respected professor of literature at the University of Galway who has a violent habit his friends in high places are only too happy to ignore. And when Jack rescues a preppy American student on a Rhodes Scholarship from a couple of kid thugs, he also unexpectedly gains a new sidekick, who abandons his thesis on Beckett to write a biography of Galway’s most magnetic rogue. Between pub crawls and violent outbursts, Jack’s vengeful plot against the professor soon spirals toward chaos. Enter Emerald, an edgy young Goth who could either be the answer to Jack’s problems, or the last ripped stitch in his undoing. Ireland may be known as a “green Eden,” but in Jack Taylor’s world, the national color has a decidedly lethal sheen.

At the beginning of Bruen's dark tribute to the Irish fascination with the American dream, Stephen Blake is on the run after a bank heist, hoping to disappear in the desert near Tucson. Blake has the money and his girlfriend, Siobhan, knows how to launder it. All he has to do is change his accent and his skin and pass as an American. But John A. Stapleton, contract killer for the IRA, wants more than his share of the swag—and the psychotic Dade, obsessively devoted to the music of Tammy Wynette, is wandering the Southwest like a slaughter wagon. Noir master Bruen (The Guards) effortlessly moves his storyline back and forth in time, all his trademark pop-culture references in place, the banshee of existential agony wailing loudly.

"They don't come much tougher than Ken Bruen's Irish roughneck, Jack Taylor, a man with bad habits who does good despite himself."―Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review Ex-cop-turned-PI Jack Taylor has finally escaped the despair of his violent life in Galway in favor of a quiet retirement in the country with his friend, a former Rolling Stones roadie, and a falcon named Maeve. But on a day trip back into the city to sort out his affairs, Jack is hit by a truck in front of Galway's Famine Memorial, left in a coma but mysteriously without a scratch on him. When he awakens weeks later, he finds Ireland in a frenzy over the so-called "Miracle of Galway." People have become convinced that the two children spotted tending to him are saintly, and the site of the accident sacred. The Catholic Church isn't so sure, and Jack is commissioned to help find the children to verify the miracle—or expose the stunt. But Jack isn't the...

_WARNING!_ THIS MAY BE THE MOST SHOCKING BOOK YOU EVER READ! Max Fisher used to run a computer company; Angela Petrakos was his assistant and mistress. But that was last year. Now Max is reinventing himself as a hip-hop crack dealer and Angela's back in Ireland, hooking up with a would-be record-setter.in the field of serial killing. Will their paths cross again? What do you think? From the evil geniuses who brought you Bust comes a roller-coaster ride of suspense, mayhem and vicious fun that'll make you reluctant ever to open your mail again. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Inheriting a Galway cottage may change a troubled woman's life—but not the way she hopes—in this thriller from an "original, grimly hilarious" author (The Washington Post). Kate Mitchell's in the process of kicking her heroin addiction—with the help of alcohol—when a letter arrives informing her that her aunt in Ireland has passed away and bequeathed her a home near the ocean. This could be the start of a new and better life for Kate, far away from Brooklyn, where she and her surviving brothers are each struggling with their own dark pasts. But Aunt Mary didn't die peacefully—quite the opposite. The pair of thugs responsible for her murder had plans for her house: namely, turning it into a lovely seaside meth lab. One of Mary's killers, however, finds his focus shifting when he spots a photo of the dead woman's American niece, who bears a striking resemblance to the late opera singer Maria Callas, the beloved...

The latest Jack Taylor novel from the Godfather of Irish noir. For fans of Adrian McKinty and Derek Raymond. After too much tragedy and violence, Jack Taylor might have at long last found contentment. Of course, he still knocks back too much Jameson and dabbles in uppers, but he has a new woman in his life, a freshly bought apartment, and little sign of trouble on the horizon, unless you count looking after his girlfriend's spoilt nine-year-old. But once again, trouble comes to him, this time in the form of wealthy Frenchman Pierre Renaud, who wants Jack to investigate the double-murder of his twin sons. Entitled, drug-addled, les enfants terribles were bound to a wheelchair, mouths glued shut and pushed off the pier. He shouldn't, but Jack reluctantly agrees to investigate and it opens the door to the past again... 'Bruen is on top form' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. 'Nobody writes like Ken...

In this new installment of Ken Bruen's beloved Jack Taylor series, the whiskey-swigging Irish detective investigates a series of violent attacks on the local convent's nuns.Jack Taylor wakes up from a coma to discover that much of the world has changed since he last walked the streets of Galway. The pandemic had hit while he was under, devastating the lives of many in his beloved city and beyond. Now, as Jack tries to recover from the attack that put him in the hospital and absorb the incredible changes in the world around him, a woman approaches him with a distressing case: two local nuns have been bludgeoned by a mysterious man wielding a hammer, and more are sure to follow. As the police fail to act while the violence against the Sisters escalates, Jack seems like their only hope.Initially wary of becoming involved in the investigation, Jack finds he cannot stay away from the mystery surrounding these vicious attacks. He...

Ken Bruen, the “Godfather of the modern Irish crime novel” (Irish Independent), is beloved for his black humor, verse-like prose, and irascible protagonist Jack Taylor, an ex-cop who is as addicted to trouble as he is to Jameson, pills, and pop culture. In The Emerald Lie, the latest terror to be visited upon the dark Galway streets arrives in a most unusual form: a Cambridge graduate who becomes murderous over split infinitives, dangling modifiers, and any other sign of bad grammar. Meanwhile, Jack is approached by a grieving father with a pocketful of cash on offer if Jack will help exact revenge on those responsible for his daughter’s brutal rape and murder. Though hesitant to get involved, Jack agrees to get a read on the likely perpetrators. But Jack is soon derailed by the reappearance of Emily (previous alias: Emerald), the chameleon-like young woman who joined forces with Jack to take down her pedophile father in Green Hell and who remains passionate, clever, and utterly homicidal. She will use any sort of coercion to get Jack to conspire with her against the serial killer the Garda have nicknamed “the Grammarian,” but her most destructive obsession just might be Jack himself. **Review Praise for The Emerald Lie: “Bruen remains on the mountaintop of contemporary Irish noir. Sprightly, elliptical prose is a plus.”—*Publishers Weekly* “To simply describe the setup of the plot is to pay short shrift to Bruen’s prodigious writing skills . . . Not to be missed.”—*BookPage* Praise for Ken Bruen and the Jack Taylor series: “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.”—Seattle Times, on *Green Hell* “Ken Bruen . . . the Godfather of the modern Irish crime novel . . . writes in machine gun fashion, his words verbal bullets that rip through the veneer of the safe bourgeois Catholic society in which he was reared . . . The acerbic wit and off-the-wall comments throughout all the books are somewhat reminiscent of the work of Raymond Chandler and Peter Cheyenne.”—Irish Independent, on *Green Hell* “One of the most sublime pleasures in crime fiction is reading a new book by Ken Bruen . . . This is real writing, the likes of which we are blessed to behold.”—Strand Magazine, on *Purgatory* “Ken Bruen doesn’t need a lot of words to tell his tales of perpetually falling Irish angel Jack Taylor—he knows the right ones. 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 things Jack witnesses these days . . . would cause a saint to go blind. And Jack, whose heroism is fueled by ‘plain old-fashioned rage, bile and bitterness,’ is no saint. Never was, never will be. Amen.”—New York Times Book Review, on *Purgatory* “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* About the Author Ken Bruen received a doctorate in metaphysics, taught English in South Africa, and then became a crime novelist. The critically acclaimed author of eleven previous Jack Taylor novels and The White Trilogy, he is the recipient of two Barry Awards and two Shamus Awards and has twice been a finalist for the Edgar Award. He lives in Galway, Ireland.

With his hated father dead, a man's life takes a dangerous turnHe doesn't cry when his father, Frank, dies. The old man was an abusive, self-absorbed drunk, and when cancer takes him to his deathbed, his son is there to watch. At Frank's final moment he leans over and whispers in his ear, letting the dying man know that he's glad to see him go.His only inheritance is a heavy, leather-bound book. He has never seen it before, and has trouble believing that his brutal, ignorant father ever touched something so beautiful. But the volume is well-thumbed, full of aphorisms and advice written in the dead man's hand. Soon after he reads it, the son finds his life spiraling out of control. If he doesn't want to follow Daddy to the grave, he had best heed the lessons of the book.

A portrait of the PI from the Shamus Award winner who created him: "They don't come much tougher than Ken Bruen's Irish roughneck, Jack Taylor." —The New York Times Book ReviewIn this short work, Edgar Award finalist Ken Bruen—"a Celtic Dashiell Hammett"—takes us deeper into his character Jack Taylor, formerly of Ireland's police force, the Garda Síochána, now a living-on-the-edge private detective (The Philadelphia Inquirer)."Jack, as ja series know all too well, has a gift for blarney, for plain speaking, for poetic melancholy, for downing shots of Jameson's [sic] without ice, and for pregnant one-word paragraphs." —Kirkus Reviews"Bruen's storytelling style, a stream-of-consciousness mix of prose and verse, strips away Galway's tourist-board facade and offers a darkly comic social commentary." —Booklist"The Godfather of the modern Irish crime novel." —The Irish...

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...

Cross (kros/ noun, verb, adjective) means an ancient instrument of torture, or, in a very bad humour, or, a punch thrown across an opponent's punch. Jack Taylor brings death and pain to everyone he loves. His only hope of redemption – his surrogate son, Cody – is lying in hospital in a coma. At least he still has Ridge, his old friend from the Guards, though theirs is an unorthodox relationship. When she tells him that a boy has been crucified in Galway city, he agrees to help her search for the killer. Jack's investigations take him to many of his old haunts where he encounters ghosts, dead and living. Everyone wants something from him, but Jack is not sure he has anything left to give. Maybe he should sell up, pocket his Euros and get the hell out of Galway like everyone else seems to be doing. Then the sister of the murdered boy is burned to death, and Jack decides he must hunt down the killer, if only to administer his own brand of rough justice.