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CROSS
by Ken Bruen
Bantam, April 2007
288 pages
10.99 GBP
ISBN: 0593055136


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Jack Taylor's latest barefooted walk over the coals begins with an Irish saying: 'A cross is only agony if you are aware of it'. Jack knows about crosses, all right. This novel follows closely on the events detailed in last year's PRIEST. Cody, the young man shot in Taylor's stead, lies clinging to life in hospital and Jack walks the streets, wracked with guilt.

Nor does he have anywhere really to turn for comfort. He's still off the booze, though he's figured out a curious ritual to keep himself from drinking, one that provides a small degree of penance even when he's behaving himself. He's not smoking, either, and should he be tempted to give his guilt a holiday, there's always Father Malachy or some other censorious Galway resident to remind him of just how much he has to atone for.

So it is no surprise that Jack is wound pretty tight. Still, when Ridge, his lesbian friend from the Garda, asks him to see what he can find out about the crucifixion death of a young college student, he agrees to help. And when a stranger begs his aid in the matter of a string of lost dogs, he agrees to that too. After all, he did save some swans once upon a time.

But Jack does not quite have his mind on either job. In the first place, he doesn't seem to hear what people are telling him. Partly this is because he is actually going deaf, but even more it seems that his bitterness, anger, and guilt have erected an almost impenetrable barrier between himself and his native city. Ironically, he seems to be thinking less clearly sober than he ever did when drunk.

His native city itself is changing also. Though it still contains more than enough people to remind Jack of his shortcomings, it is beginning to fill up with outsiders. The Celtic Tiger has decidedly reached Galway and wherever Taylor turns, he is brought up against a change that he resents. It was black Irish Catholic guilt that made Jack who he is; painful though that self may be, he clings to it against his will. He's even taken to dropping into the odd church and lighting a few (futile) candles. Nevertheless, he is also thinking of selling up and flying off to Florida, that mecca for the sunshine-starved Irish.

Actually, there's not a lot of detection going on here. Instead, we have a pitiless portrayal of the car-wreck that is Jack Taylor's life, a disaster so encompassing that we cannot turn our eyes away. Jack has transformed himself from a man hopelessly out of control to a man who is too much in it. Neither extreme works very well. Can Taylor find more moderate ground? One doubts it, but one still looks forward to watching him try.

Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, April 2007

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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