Review by Booklist Review
Onetime Irish PI Jack Taylor, who knows every seedy bar in Galway, is recovering from a failed suicide attempt, and the doctor who diagnosed a terminal condition seems to have changed his mind. In need of money, Jack finds work as a night-shift security guard. Jack's boss, a wealthy Ukrainian, offers him a big payday if Jack can secure The Red Book, purported to be a blasphemous take on The Book of Kells. Then the beautiful, psychotic, homicidal Emerald (The Emerald Lie, 2016) turns up again. Galway is darker than ever here, and the ghosts that haunt Jack all the people he ever cared for grow in number. Bruen's faithful followers will find that this one is not unlike Jack's earlier ventures on the dark side, especially those in which the bewitching Emerald appears. But there is a difference: Jack's formerly howling philippics about life in Ireland are dialed down to gripes. He merely notes the deaths of David Bowie and Lemmy and mentions his distaste for candidate Trump. Jack, it seems, has become an old man, binge-watching boxed sets of TV shows.--Gaughan, Thomas Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Jack Taylor, Bruen's perennially tortured protagonist, suffers new levels of angst in his 13th noir outing (after 2016's The Emerald Lie). Recovering from a failed suicide attempt after a mistaken diagnosis of terminal cancer, Taylor is trying to live the quiet life in Galway, working as a security guard and looking after his dog, Storm. Trouble, however, has a way of finding him. When his boss offers him a job searching for The Red Book, a lost heretical text apparently in the possession of an ex-priest hiding in Ireland, Taylor initially scoffs at the "Dan Brown lite" scheme, but he needs the money and ultimately accepts. Meanwhile, a series of slain animals are found in Galway's Eyre Square accompanied by cryptic notes left by an ultra-right-wing group that aims to return to an earlier era of conservative religion. When Emily, the chameleonlike sociopath who's flitted in and out of Jack's life, turns out to be mixed up in the plot, things get really nasty. 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. Agent: Lukas Ortiz, Philip G. Spitzer Literary Agency. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Following a failed suicide attempt, Bruen's profane Jack Taylor (The Emerald Lie) is down on his luck-as usual-and working as a security guard. His boss offers him a temptingly large sum of money to find a heretical book rumored to be in the possession of a priest hiding in Galway, Ireland, after fleeing the Vatican in Rome. The elusive and captivating Em, who has preoccupied Jack's heart and soul since being introduced in Green Hell, is also entangled in the hunt for The Red Book as the darkness that surrounds Jack threatens to overwhelm him. VERDICT Employing elegantly poetic brevity and exploring religion's dark side, a favored motif, this is another strong addition to Bruen's noirish canon. Jack Taylor is an iconic character, a charming reprobate whose plaintive booze-drenched rants are the perfect vehicle for Bruen's black humor and insights related to pop culture, music, and literature. [See Prepub Alert, 5/7/17.]-ACT © Copyright 2017. 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
Jack Taylor goes looking for an explosive volume and finds it and a whole lot of other explosions.Working these days as a security guard for a factory owned by mysterious Ukrainian Alexander Knox-Keaton, Jack's called into the office of his boss and given a new job: to find The Red Book, which has been pinched from the Vatican archives by rogue priest Frank Miller. It's no trouble for a man with Jack's contacts to find Miller, but the lapsed cleric refuses to tell Jack anything about the missing item, and before Jack can question him again, he's been beaten to death and has loose pages from a book jammed down his throat. The news naturally brings Sgt. Ridge, the lesbian cop who was once Jack's friend, to his door in a less than friendly role and brings Jack back to see his boss, who brusquely pays him off and warns him that terrible things will happen to him if he doesn't stop asking questions. It's not much of a threat since six terrible things happen to Jack most days before breakfast. But although Jack does indeed find the missing copy of The Red Book, its discovery seems powerless to stem the wave of violence it's unleasheda wave that will engulf Jack, Sgt. Ridge, goth girl Emerald McKee (Green Hell, 2015), and Lorna Dunphy, the schoolgirl who's given Jack 19 euros to find her missing brother, Eamon, who's going to be hard to find because he doesn't exist. All these 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. Maybe Ireland doesn't have a monopoly on troubles after all. Dispensing with the genre's customary pleasurespromising plot developments go nowhere, menacing characters are abruptly killed off, the solution solves nothingBruen still manages to deliver prose that's both tough and elegiac, plus enough white space per page to tempt even Alice in Wonderland. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
