Customer Reviews

The Killing of the Tinkers: A Novel

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an odd, but thoroughly enjoyable, novel. Set in Galway, Ireland, Jack Taylor is an alcoholic and cocaine addict, recently bounced from the Guards. He arrives back in Galway, looks up old friends, consumes quantities of booze and coke and is approached by a man who wants him to help solve the murders of several "tinkers," formerly known in less politically correct days as Gypsies.

Taylor's approach to things is, putting it mildly, chaotic. He is given to a love of old rock 'n roll music, has an expectedly odd assortment of friends, makes enemies easily and suffers fierce hangovers.

But he does solve the mystery in the end in an unpredictable way.

Overall, Bruen's writing is wonderfully quirky. Jack Taylor is a well developed character; so well-developed, in fact, that he's not particularly likeable. Most of the other characters are kind of thing, but passable.

The plot . . . well, it isn't a smooth and winding road, that's for sure. But the twists are fun to roll with. A satisfying excursion with an author with a unique approach. If half-stars were a possibility, I'd give it four and a half. Not quite a five, but well worth reading.

Jerry

Believable, in-your-face, and real; you are there, sitting across the table, eavesdropping at the next bar stool. It leaps off every page and makes you part of Jack Taylor's world. I was grabbed from the first sentence of the first page by the self-destructive soul of Jack Taylor; a soul that could only be cauterized by alcohol and cocaine. Yes, that's dark. But it's too narrow an assessment. If you have a dark side ( and how many of us have, if we're honest) you will find a memory or two in the lost evenings and anguished mornings of Jack Taylor. But where there is dark, there must also be light. And that light is there, perhaps dim at times, but it's there. It's there in the women who love him, in the people who still trust him, in the friends who care for him, in himself too: his ability to pick himself up again, his sense of justice, his attempts to find and punish the evil ones. There's the humour too, always there, black humour maybe, but it's the fabric that saves Jack Taylor and the people who populate Ken Bruen's Galway from absolute despair. Yes, Jack Taylor finds his anaesthetic in cocaine and alcohol. But he also finds it in books. It seems at times that he could just as easily be tempted into Charlie Byrne's as into his local pub. If you love to read (and I suspect you wouldn't be reading this unless you do) you'll be able to 'stack' Jack Taylor's selections on your own book shelves as you get lost in this dark trek through the netherworld of Galway.

Maybe Ken Bruen is doing for Galway what Joyce did for Dublin in Ulysses: giving us a map of a Galway that is rapidly disappearing under the paws of the Celtic Tiger.

That's it. Buy the book, tell your friends, buy some more................

Believable, in-your-face, and real; you are there, sitting across the table, eavesdropping at the next bar stool. It leaps off every page and makes you part of Jack Taylor's world. I was grabbed from the first sentence of the first page by the self-destructive soul of Jack Taylor; a soul that could only be cauterized by alcohol and cocaine. Yes, that's dark. But it's too narrow an assessment. If you have a dark side ( and how many of us have, if we're honest) you will find a memory or two in the lost evenings and anguished mornings of Jack Taylor. But where there is dark, there must also be light. And that light is there, perhaps dim at times, but it's there. It's there in the women who love him, in the people who still trust him, in the friends who care for him, in himself too: his ability to pick himself up again, his sense of justice, his attempts to find and punish the evil ones. There's the humour too, always there, black humour maybe, but it's the fabric that saves Jack Taylor and the people who populate Ken Bruen's Galway from absolute despair. Yes, Jack Taylor finds his anaesthetic in cocaine and alcohol. But he also finds it in books. It seems at times that he could just as easily be tempted into Charlie Byrne's as into his local pub. If you love to read (and I suspect you wouldn't be reading this unless you do) you'll be able to 'stack' Jack Taylor's selections on your own book shelves as you get lost in this dark trek through the netherworld of Galway.

Maybe Ken Bruen is doing for Galway what Joyce did for Dublin in Ulysses: giving us a map of a Galway that is rapidly disappearing under the paws of the Celtic Tiger.

That's it. Buy the book, tell your friends, buy some more................

"Leaving Galway, I'd left behind a string of deaths.... The investigation had led to.... Three murders. Four, if you count my best friend. My heart being hammered. Tons of cash. Exile."

Jack's back. Wisecracking ex-Garda Jack Taylor is back in Galway after a spell in London. He's brought little more than a coke habit back with him. Now, hanging out at his new favorite pub (defined: one that still allows him in), he tries to reclaim his drinking habit too. While he would prefer nothing more than to nurse a pint --- or, better yet, several pints --- and drown the woes of his Irish past, trouble finds him sitting there on that stool.

A tinker named Sweeper seeks him out and invokes a name from a death Jack looked into, the one that sent him fleeing Galway at the end of THE GUARDS. Jack tries to brush him off, but finds himself unable to turn away.

I said, "Call me if you need anything."
"I need one thing, Jack Taylor."
"Name it."
"Find whoever's killing my people."

Sweeper tells Jack of several deaths among the young tinkers, and of the Garda's response: none. They're only tinkers, after all. He pays Jack well to find the killer. Whether Jack is actually up to the task is debatable at best.

There's always more to Jack Taylor's days than the pursuit of clues. He has friends with crises, strangers with more crises, and an abundance of his own personal crises. Most times, he faces all of these by getting drunk. To his credit, he manages to solve the mystery, despite some rather untidy side effects. The bulk of the entertainment isn't in Jack's sleuthing abilities, though, but in his interactions with others, be they friend, foe, authority figure, mom, wife, girlfriend, lad or lass. He is one idiosyncratic character, full of acerbic quotes: "Lord knows, feeling bad is the skin I've worn almost all my life." Ken Bruen's dubious "hero" is the epitome of a guy you love to hate. Worse, though, he's the guy you hate to love, which you definitely do, at least in his role as the caustic, reluctant PI.

Last year I read THE GUARDS, wherein Bruen introduced Jack Taylor. I have spent many long months waiting for the second, all-too-short, installment of Taylor's adventures. Bruen writes with a unique, if unconventional, style that I find refreshing. Once you get into this book's rhythm, I think you will find it hard to return to stories with long, flowing sentences and showy descriptions. What a voice this author has! Not pretty, not happy, not uplifting, but tragically comedic and highly addictive.

--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers