Ghosts of Galway (Jack Taylor Novels, 14, Band 14)

Ghosts of Galway (Jack Taylor Novels, 14, Band 14)

Hardcover
4.01

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Beschreibung

Ken Bruen is a singular voice in crime fiction “with his ear for lilting Irish prose and his taste for the kind of gallows humor heard only at the foot of the gallows” (New York Times Book Review). In The Ghosts of Galway, he brings those elegiac talents to bear on a case involving a famously blasphemous red book and Bruen’s equally profane antihero Jack Taylor.

As well-versed in politics, pop culture, and crime fiction as he is ill-fated in life, Jack Taylor is recovering from a mistaken medical diagnosis and a failed suicide attempt. In need of money, and with former cop on his resume, Jack has been hired as a night-shift security guard. But his Ukrainian boss has Jack in mind for a bit of off-the-books work. He wants Jack to find what some claim to be the first true book of heresy, The Red Book, currently in the possession of a rogue priest who is hiding out in Galway after fleeing a position at the Vatican. Despite Jack’s distaste for priests of any stripe, the money is too good to turn down. Em, the many-faced woman who has had a vise on Jack’s heart and mind for the past two years, reappears and turns out to be entangled with the story of The Red Book, too, leading Jack down ever more mysterious and lethal pathways.

It seems all sides are angling for a piece of Jack Taylor, but as The Ghosts of Galway twists toward a violent end, he is increasingly plagued by ghosts―by the disposable and disposed of in a city filled with as much darkness as the deepest corners of Jack’s own mind.
Haupt-Genre
N/A
Sub-Genre
N/A
Format
Hardcover
Seitenzahl
336
Preis
22.49 €

Beiträge

1
Alle
4

My thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for granting me the opportunity to read this e- book as an advance reading copy. It was, admittedly, the cover that first piqued my interest. The description sounded like something I might enjoy and I wasn't wrong with that notion. It did take me a few pages to get into the unique writing style and adjust to the (ahem) colourful language. I don't have a problem with swear words as per se (on the contrary) but there were loads of those. It was my first encounter with Jack Taylor and his "verse" but the author managed the balancing act of briefly explaining to new readers who is who and what the dealings with the respective character and Jack had been in the preceding 12 books without boring readers who already knew about it. Just like the writing itself the storytelling is unique. Where other authors of the genre dwell on building suspense, strew in details and try to lay false trails, Ken Bruen is refreshingly "no sh*t and f*cks given". That too needs a little getting used to since it is something else. Despite a lack of "building up" the characters get their unique personas even in the brief descriptions and encounters the reader is granted. For more depth I suspect I would have (will have, more likely) to read the entire series - beginning with book #1 called 'The Guards'. Jack Taylor probably belongs to the category "love or hate" with nothing in between. The unique writing, the characters, the swearing and the many deaths (no spoilers hence keeping this rather vague) and the entire lack of keeping somewhat the protocol of police work up or at least the pretence thereof might be major put offs for many but despite my love for protocol and storybuilding, I enjoyed this book immensely. The things that I didn't like was the fast pace towards the end. It felt rushed through to get to a quick end before running out of pages (or time?) and at times I would have liked a tad more of what is going on in Jack and the other persons. A few times Ken Bruen seemed to have lost the golden thread and picked up loose ends here and there along the way which made it confusing and took me a moment or two longer to swing back into the narration and keep track of what is going on. I didn't expect the hint of X Files vibe at the very end but loved it all the same. Same goes for the - in my eyes - smart use of news headlines (such as the deaths of David Bowie or Prince or President Cheetos' run for his current job) to establish a time line and show the reader how much time has passed between events. It helped that those events are still relatively fresh in my memory - a different story for someone who might read the book in a couple of years from now. Anyway a surprisingly great read I hadn't expected to be so "on point" with its own narration when I started reading it.

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