Review by Booklist Review
Soul-sick former Garda detective Jack Taylor is ready to move to America. Nearly everyone he ever cared about is dead. Former friends despise him. Even a letter from an apparent psycho threatening the lives of cops, a nun, a judge, and a child can't change his plans. But when Ridge, his former partner, is diagnosed with cancer, he stays to support her: It's God's own vicious joke, the only woman I managed to keep in my life was gay. Eventually, Taylor rouses himself to find the killer, but only after another 150-page howl of anguish at his own failings, the new Ireland, priests, the smoking ban in pubs, et al. Along the way, he is brutally beaten on the order of his former friend, the Garda superintendent, and he falls off the wagon. (After two lost weeks, his recovery regimen is 10 drinks a day and a Xanax.) Taylor's howl is corrosively funny and filled with insights into modern Ireland, but the resolution is perfunctory, just as it was in Cross (2008). Fans of the Taylor series may wonder if they've already read this one.--Gaughan, Thomas Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of Edgar-finalist Bruen's lean seventh Jack Taylor novel, the aging, alcoholic Irish ex-cop, who moved to the U.S. in 2008's The Cross, knows he really ought to be in America, but he's staying in Galway because his old police partner, Ridge, has developed breast cancer. Meanwhile, he's received a "shopping list" of intended victims-two guards, one nun, one judge and one child-from the mysterious "Benedictus." One is already dead, killed in an "unfortunate hit and run," according to Superintendent Clancy, Taylor's best friend from years earlier on the force, who dismisses Taylor's fear that a serial killer is on the loose. Bruen's trademark terse style is more perfunctory than not, and parts of the narrative read like an outline, as shown by previous cases synopsized in quick asides. Taylor confronts the unlikely killer in what is a less than convincing showdown. Still, series fans should follow Taylor's current fall off the wagon, suffused by the mellow glow of Xanax, with the usual passionate interest. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Bruen's seventh Jack Taylor mystery (after Cross) is another tightly plotted tale featuring an often unlikable, hard-living antihero. When Jack receives a death list that he believes should be taken seriously, the police, including former friend and current nemesis Clancy, are dismissive. Only when the killings begin does Clancy come around, and even then not until the case becomes personal. It's up to Jack to stick his unwanted nose into the investigation, an effort not surprisingly complicated by his constant stumbles off the wagon of sobriety. There are two mysteries involved-the murderer's identity and the reason why Taylor has been personally drawn in-both of which Taylor manages to solve neatly. If there's a complaint to be made, it's that the novel feels extremely brief at only 200 well-spaced pages. Given the number of bloated efforts out there, however, perhaps it's best not to complain too loudly. Bruen's deft effort is recommended for all mystery collections [Library marketing; see Prepub Mystery, LJ 1/09.]-Craig Shufelt, Fort McMurray P.L., Alta (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Galway private eye Jack Taylor (Cross, 2008, etc.) tracks a psychopath whose craziness might be Taylor-made. The letter from someone calling himself Benedictus is short, weird and menacing, and Taylor gets total blame for its homicidal intent. Its list of targets marked for death includes two guards, a nun, a judge and a child. And it informs Taylor that "only you will truly comprehend my mission." But Taylor doesn't comprehend. Nor does he have any idea who the signer is. In a rare burst of good citizenship, he takes the letter to the Garda Siochana, the Irish National Police, where Superintendent Clancy, once his close friend, now his implacable enemy, laughs him out of his office, little knowing how he'll rue the day. Meanwhile, Taylor has a plate full of other troubles. There's the matter of his sobriety, for instance. At the moment he's on the wagon, though his purchase is precarious. There's the matter of Cathleen Ridge, the Guard who's been Taylor's "partner in hostility and uneasy alliance for years." She's battling breast cancer. But Benedictus won't go away. And when Taylor finally discovers what's made him so bitter, he's shocked and angryand scared. In his seventh time out, Taylor isn't as compelling as he has been, or needs to be, to compensate for Bruen's pedestrian plotting. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
