Priest
Ken
Bruen
Bantam Press
ISBN: 0-5930-5510-1
2006
 |
Priest
by
Ken Bruen
Taut, dark and deeply sinister, Ken Bruen's latest novel featuring the
tragic Jack Taylor, Priest is awash with everything that
is good with modern crime fiction.
Taylor, recovering from the devastation of personal loss, has always
believed himself to be beyond forgiveness. But the beheading of a respected
Galway Priest and an unexpected partnership makes him hope that his one
desperate vision - that of normal family ties - might yet be fulfilled.
Constantly at odds with himself, his addictions and the rapidly changing
Irish world around him where traditional values are becoming extinct,
Taylor gives no quarter to the greed and selfishness of his kinsmen,
who seem hell bent on bringing destruction to the land of his childhood
that he remembers with a sour-edged fondness.
Conspiracies surround him and the past
is never very far away though Jack Taylor must take on the most powerful
and secretive of opponents, The Church, to find the answers he needs.
Often sombre, Priest is
nonetheless magical in its construction, pace and dialogue. Written
in the first person, the reader can see and feel Taylor coming to terms
with his traumas, his alcoholism and his personal pain as though he
were an acquaintance with whom they might have once shared a pint and
a chat, but sadly no longer.
Bruen's mastery of the colloquial adds
to the realism he has conjured up, making the peripheral and central
characters strong and the City of Galway vibrant, though without ever
diminishing the sinister underbelly of a plot reeking of revenge, disillusionment
and cynicism.
Ken Bruen has created a Crime Fiction
masterpiece with Priest; a novel that has all the social
comment of a good John Baker novel, the intrigue and captivation of
an excellent Mo Hayder and the touches of black, ironic, self-deprecating
humour of J P Donleavey at his height.
www.kenbruen.com
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