Headstone

It took the devil himself (The Devil, 2010) to distract Jack Taylor from his dyspeptic, fatalistic, and often hilarious existential screeds against th. new Ireland. the institutional Catholic Church, his own failings, and the fact that almost everyone he ever cared about is dead. Now Jack is distracted again but in a new way: he is in love. I don't do happy. Yet he is coming close until one day the mail arrives, and Jack gets a small package containing a miniature headstone, prompting him to throw back the Jameson-Guinness-Xanax cocktails with abandon. When he is abducted, beaten, and has two fingers sheared off his hand, the cocktails serve as painkillers. Many drinks and drugs later, he divines that his assailants plan to commit the first Irish Columbine, targeting a special-needs school. This one is vintage Bruen. Jack's week in Paris with his new love is eloquently described. Subplots involving Ireland's cratered economy and corrupt priests fuel fine new rants, and Taylor muses about books worth reading and the joys of Irish rock 'n' roll. A must for the Bruen faithful.--Gaughan, Thoma. Copyright 2010 Booklist

Irish author Bruen's hard-hitting ninth Jack Taylor novel (after The Devil) finds the Galway PI coping with alcoholism, a permanent limp, hearing loss, and emotional scars that continually threaten to take him down. For once, however, Taylor appears to have found a promising love interest in Laura, an American-born crime novelist, with whom he's recently enjoyed a romantic idyll in Paris. Of course, moments of grace are fleeting in Bruen's world, and things rapidly head south after Taylor receives a miniature gravestone in the post, courtesy of a group of psychopaths calling themselves "Headstone." Led by a fanatic recidivist criminal from a previous Taylor case, they target the "weak," including the handicapped, the mentally ill, and the homeless. Now they have their sights set on Taylor and everyone close to him. That the plot is a tad cartoonish and over-the-top scarcely matters in a remarkable series that at heart is about one man's reckoning with a lifetime of pain and loss in a rapidly changing Ireland. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Award-winning author Bruen brings back the intrepid Jack Taylor (The Devil) to figure out a brutal series of hate crimes, seemingly random, in Galway, Ireland. Even Jack will be flummoxed by the pure evil he's forced to confront. [See Prepub Alert, 4/4/11.] (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.