The Magdalen Martyrs (Jack Taylor Series) - Hardcover

Bruen, Ken

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312316453 ISBN 13: 9780312316457

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2005

Synopsis

Jack Taylor is walking the delicate edge of a sobriety he doesn't trust when his phone rings. He's in debt to a Galway tough named Bill Cassell, what the locals call a "hard man." Bill did Jack a big favor a while back; the trouble is, he never lets a favor go unreturned.

Jack is amazed when Cassell simply asks him to track down a woman, now either dead or very old, who long ago helped his mother escape from the notorious Magdalen laundry, where young wayward girls were imprisoned and abused. Jack doesn't like the odds of finding the woman, but counts himself lucky that the task is at least on the right side of the law.

Until he spends a few days spinning his wheels and is dragged in front of Cassell for a quick reminder of his priorites. Bill's goons do a little spinning of their own, playing a game of Russian roulette a little too close to the back of Jack's head. It's only blind luck and the mercy of a god he no longer trusts that land Jack back on the street rather than face down in a cellar with a bullet in his skull. He's got one chance to stay alive: find this woman.

Unfortunately, he can't escape his own curiosity, and an unnerving hunch quickly turns into a solid fact: just who Jack's looking for, and why, aren't nearly what they seem.

The Magdalen Martyrs, the third Galway-set novel by Edgar, Barry, and Macavity finalist and Shamus Award-winner Ken Bruen, is a gripping, dazzling story that takes the Jack Taylor series to explosive new heights of suspense.

About this title

About the Author

Ken Bruen was a finalist for the Edgar, Barry, and Macavity Awards, and the Private Eye Writers of America presented him with the Shamus Award for the Best Novel of 2003 for The Guards, the book that introduced Jack Taylor. He lives in Galway, Ireland.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In his third case, Galwegian ex-cop Jack Taylor--The Guards (2002), The Killing of the Tinkers (2003--buries some old friends and enemies while meeting some intriguing new ones, thanks to the addition of pills to his coterie of demons (booze, cocaine, and books). This time Jack's progress toward self-destruction is slowed both by a desultory search for a fallen angel linked to a hellish Catholic laundry and by his probe into the black habits of a sexually voracious widow. The series' real draw, though, has never been the story lines; rather, it's the eclectic, lyrical screeds pouring forth from the narrator's ruined heart. Some readers may balk at Taylor's constant literary references (in the midst of a beating, he descants on Henry Green, a "writers' writer's writer"), but these allusions are fueled by the same hard spiritual and physical thirst for sublimity that make him such a compelling existential antihero, not to mention a handy readers' advisor. Suffice it to say that fans of Roddy Doyle, James Sallis, Samuel Beckett, Irvine Welsh, Frederick Exley, Patrick McCabe, George Pelecanos, Ian Rankin, and Chuck Palahniuk will all find something to like, love, or obsess over in this stiff shot of evil chased with heartbreaking irony. Highly recommended. David Wright
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About this edition

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0312316453
• ISBN 13: 9780312316457
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288