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Summary
Summary
Jack Taylor brings death and pain to everyone he loves. His only hope of redemption - his surrogate son, Cody - is lying in the hospital in a coma. At least he still has Ridge, his old friend from the Guards, though theirs is an unorthodox relationship. When she tells him that a boy has been crucified in Galway city, he agrees to help her search for the killer.
Jack's investigations take him to many of his old haunts where he encounters ghosts, both dead and living. Everyone wants something from him, but Jack is not sure he has anything left to give. Maybe he should disappear--pocket his money and get the hell out of Galway like everyone else seems to be doing. But when the sister of the murdered boy is burned to death, Jack decides he must hunt down the killer, if only to administer his own brand of justice.
Author Notes
Ken Bruen was born in 1951 in Galway, Ireland. He was educated at Gormanston College, Meath and later at Trinity College Dublin where he earned a PhD. in metaphysics. He spent 25 years as an English teacher in Africa, Japan, Asia and South America. Ken Bruen's works include the well reeived White Trilogy and a book entitled The Guards, which won a Shamus Award .He also edited an anthology of stories set in Dublin entitled Dublin Noir. His writing speciality is crime fiction. Some of his other works include The Killing of the Tinkers, The Magdalen Martyrs, and The Dramatist and Priest, which was nominated for the 2008 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel. Ken Bruen is also the recipient of the first David Loeb Gooodis Award in 2008 for his dedication to his art.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Shamus-winner Bruen's brilliant sixth Jack Taylor novel (after 2007's Priest), the tormented Galway detective feels like a ghost in a newly prosperous city that little resembles his birthplace. Years of alcoholic dissipation have taken their toll. Jack's apprentice and surrogate son, Cody, lies in hospital, the victim of bullets meant for Jack. His only real friend is Ridge, a lesbian Ban Gardai (female cop), and their relationship is a complicated mixture of affection and hostility. Jack decides to cut his losses and move to America, but first he agrees to help Ridge solve a series of heinous murders. A young man's crucifixion is followed by his sister being burned to death. As Jack investigates, he squares off against a 20-year-old girl whose grief over her religious fanatic mother's death in a hit-and-run accident has become a black insanity that demands biblical vengeance. Bruen riffs on different meanings and implications of the word cross throughout, and his insights into pain, loss and Irishness are unforgettable. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Galway private eye Jack Taylor must catch a psychopath who kills by crucifying. On the prowl for a really bad person, Taylor tries to kick some bad habits while kicking himself for having some bad timing. Long a substance abuser, he's chosen to get clean the hard way, going cold turkey, and it's half killing him. And it's not just the booze, the pills and the smokes that are getting him down; it's all that extra gloom and doom suddenly burdening his life, which on the best day was never a thing of joy. An American kid Taylor loved almost as a son is hospitalized, comatose, his chances for recovery slim to none. Taylor's cop friend has a lump on her breast that terrifies both of them. And Taylor's decision to help an alcoholic ex-cop spawns dire consequences. Yet when he's asked to stop a sadistic killer whose hatred seems at once random and focused, he can't back away. As one character says of Taylor: "Bottom line, you're that rarity, you're a decent human being...more flawed than most, but you're not cold." Though Bruen (Priest, 2007, etc.) sometimes nudges noir into bathos, this is dark-side stuff from a master. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In this fifth Jack Taylor novel, a young man has been literally crucified in Galway city, and his sister immolated, but Taylor is so much on the existential ropes that it takes the former Garda-officer-turned-PI about 150 pages before he can rouse himself to investigate. What's troubling Taylor is that Cody, his surrogate son, is in a coma induced by gunshots intended for Taylor. Nearly every person he's ever cared about is now in a grave. In addition, he's on the wagon, and abstinence and Taylor have a torturous relationship. (Although he stops in every pub and orders a pint of Guinness and a tot of Jameson, he doesn't drink them.) Fueling his rage and desperation still further are the no-smoking signs he sees plastered throughout his city. Indeed, nearly everything about the new Ireland fuels his rage. Taylor's resolution of the two ghastly murders is almost perfunctory, and Cross loses its sharp edge once he gets to work. But, oh, those first 150 pages offer an amazing portrait of a peculiarly Irish form of despair, and nary a page passes without a memorably mordant laugh, a wonderful turn of phrase, or an aphorism that any crime fan will want to share with another devotee.--Gaughan, Thomas Copyright 2008 Booklist
Library Journal Review
As a result of a shooting meant to kill Galway PI Jack Taylor (Priest), Cody, his young apprentice and surrogate son, lies comatose and close to death in the hospital. Meanwhile, Taylor tries to make sense of the brutal murder by crucifixion of a young man and the burning death of the victim's sister. As always, things are not as they appear, and there is more than one shock for Taylor and the reader at book's end. Shamus and Macavity Award winner Bruen should be taken in small doses, as his idea of "noir" may be too dark for most. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ 11/1/07.] (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.