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Jack Taylor is back, and all is rosy in the garden. He takes time to smell the flowers and to admire that wonderful scenery on the west coast of Ireland . . . Oh, sorry, my mistake. But then you didn't really believe that, did you? If you've been following Ken Bruen's superlative series, you'll know that Jack seems destined to go even lower than you'd thought possible. The opening scenes of PRIEST find Jack in a mental hospital where he's been since the death of Serena May, the Down Syndrome child of his friends Jeff and Cathy. Serena fell out of an open window whilst Jack was supposed to be minding her. Incredibly, though -- and partly due to a strange meeting with a fellow patient -- Jack is discharged and returns to Galway. He sort of stumbles back into his old job of a PI as the hated Father Malachy asks him to find out who beheaded a paedophile priest. Meanwhile, he must deal with the fact that he has also brought Jeff and Cathy into the gutter with him. And there is also Jack's strange relationship with lesbian policewoman Ni Iomaire, who is probably his closest friend. In PRIEST she asks him to find out who is stalking her -- and this brings Jack into an unlikely partnership with Cody, a would-be PI. Ken Bruen's books are less about watertight plot and more about dissecting a character and providing a snapshot of a nation at a crossroads. The land of the saints and scholars is being invaded by creeping Americanisation. And there's also the immigration issue in the background. Jack has a couple of lucky breaks, but ultimately you know it can't and won't last -- and that doesn't give anything away, incidentally. Sometimes it feels almost like random scenes from a suicide note. There's still music and books whirling around in Jack's head -- extracts from Pascal's Pensees appear at the start of many of the chapters. And there's a great moment where Jack is talking to a drunken priest in a pub and the priest quotes "the devil's right hand." "Revelations?" asks Jack. "No, Steve Earle," says the priest. If you haven't come across Ken Bruen before, do not under any circumstances starts with this book, as it will make no sense to you whatsoever. Instead, go back to the start and read them religiously in order. They're not easy reading, and never read them when you're feeling down. But Bruen should be valued as one of the most challenging and memorable writers in the genre at the moment.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, December 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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