Customer Reviews

Cross

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First Sentence: It took them a time to crucify the kid.

There is a lot going on in Jack Taylor's life. He is off the drink; thinking of selling his apartment and moving to the US.
The young man, who became his protégée, and who Jack came to love as a son, is in a coma having taken a gunshot meant for Jack. Now another ex-Guarda, fired for drunkenness, comes asking for work so Jack sets him off on a case of dog-napping. And current Guarda friend, Ridge, asks Jack's help on a case where a young man has been crucified.

Bruen's writing is incomparable. Jack reminds me of a car stuck on the rail tracks with the train coming; you don't want to watch but can't turn away in desperate hope he get off before the train hits. You feel his desperate attempts to improve his situation but life constantly challenges his resolve. No matter what, Jack is one of the most compelling characters I read. Bruen also gives the reader a real sense of being Irish, including the religious, cultural and historic influences on their lives. On the flyleaf of Cross it says "Do not expect to put it down unscathed." As opposed to be usual marketing hype, I'd say that's a true statement for reading any of the Jack Taylor books. They may not be for everyone because of the profanity and violence, but I find them exceptional.

In Galway detective Jack Taylor feels his past has caught up with him as the years of boozing has wracked his body. A loner due to his alcoholism, he is emotionally shattered when his apprentice Cody was shot when Jack was the intended victim. Jack decides it is time to cross the pond and start anew in America.

While Cody remains in the hospital, Jack's solo friend lesbian Gardai Ridge persuades him to help her on a monstrous series of murders. The first victim was crucified alive followed by the burning at the stake of his sister. Jack's investigation leads him to a grieving twenty year old woman screaming for fire and brimstone against those involved in a hit and run that killed her bible thumping mother.

The Jack Taylor Irish thrillers are some of the most exciting tales on the market, but CROSS may be the best yet as Ken Bruen plays brilliant word games with connotations, denotations, and implications of the title word. The story line is filled with action yet enables the reader to know Jack who personally understands crippling grief as he believes suffering is as Irish as stew.

Harriet Klausner

Jack Taylor has gone through a lot in his native Galway, Ireland, causing distress to many as well as himself in the previous five books in the series. In the current novel, he continues to suffer, especially since he maintains his sobriety and contemplates leaving Ireland altogether for the United States.

But first he has to solve some killings and bring justice to the killers. While he wanders around seeking clues, we are treated to the dark corners of Galway and insight into the development of the city and its people. The author's ability to let us look into Taylor's psyche is unique, as is his writing and descriptions. The book is definitely different, but is highly recommended.

The sixth installment in Bruen's "Galway noir" ex-Garda Jack Taylor's lonely, agitated, and despairing fight to, as he recalls, carry out justice in the alley rather than law in the courts, proves excoriating, harrowing, and satisfying. While I've liked-- if that's the word for such grim fiction-- all of the series, there was a bit of straining in recent episodes due to coincidences, unrelieved mayhem, and Jack's self-hatred. Not that these have diminished exactly in "Cross," but Bruen appears to have better insights into his protagonist's awareness of his conflicted nature.

"I admitted to me own self-- a thing I hated to do-- I was scared. I was alone. Your Irish bachelor in all his pitiful glory, shabby and bitter, ruined and crumbling.

With a plan." (95)

Fed up with a gentrified, commodified, faux-British, and cruel Galway remade by euros and Eurotrash, Jack resolves to sell his flat and move to Florida. There's only a curious case of dognapping and a few horrific murders to solve first. As usual, his scheme to investigate, report, and abscond goes predictably awry.

As always, Galway's a character along with the locals.

"Summer was definitely over. The peculiar light, unique to the West of Ireland, was flooding the street-- it's a blend of brightness but always with the threat of rain, and it glistens like wet crystal even as it soothes you. The edge of darkness in creeping along the horizon and you get the feeling you better grab it while it lasts." (40-41) Such evocative prose comes rarely here, all the more to enjoy it.

Eyre Square crumbles, a gay ghetto thrives nearby, a Mexican restaurant seems "very authentic," and the housing prices skyrocket despite, circa 2004, the bubble bursting for the boomtown. Guns are sold out of a van by Salthill church; it's hard to find a St. Brigid's traditional cross for sale in the religious goods shop. The pubs are always there, tempting Jack back from sobriety. This element remains one of Bruen's motifs, and he limns well the agony of the recovering alcoholic.

There's fewer of his old friends that return. Often, the price of hanging out with Jack appears to be mortal. Stewart's a welcome presence; his return from his Zen retreat (in Limerick!) to encounter Jack in a rage I found the novel's best scene. It's back with combative Ridge and the irascible Father Malachy, joined by newcomer Gina, an Italian doctor, and such momentarily glimpsed but memorably drawn folks as the mother of another ex-Guard, Mrs. Heaton; King, the owner of a suspicious canned goods exporting firm; and a rather kindly-- for once-- priest, Jim.

The plot, as before, has its twists and turns. Less manic than some before, and there's a growing sense of maturity and its costs upon the hard-living, brittle, and cantankerous haunted figure who pursues evil into the streets and even into the sea. The novel does not make a false turn. You'd have trouble starting in with number six in the series, however, and the narrative plunges you in right away where the last one, "Priest," left off. If you've stuck with Jack in the past, on the other hand, this well-crafted story takes you to its last sentence with flair, poignancy, and weight.

One of the great writes of our time. He makes you feel the pain and in a strange way it is uplifting. This may be the best of the Taylor series. Taylors world is so ugly that as you read, you wish the guy gets a break.


It almost feels wrong to like a story about a guy so burdened by life.

There's something about Ken Bruen's writing that keeps me coming back for more. I've read a bunch of the Jack Taylor books in the last few years and this is one of my favorites, because I think it shows what Bruen does best: hard-edged cynicism (cynic = disappointed idealist), his verbal sparring with people who get on his nerves, his refusal to have sunshine blown up his bunghole or to deal with b.s., nonsense, lies, or spin of any type. Jack Taylor calls it as he sees it, and that's refreshing. And I should point out that I tend to avoid books featuring alcoholic characters, especially those in recovery, as they often smack of self-pity or self-congratulation. In CROSS, we see a man struggling and getting up again each time life smacks him down. Jack Taylor himself is a huge fan of music, and though I've not seen a reference to it any of these books, his theme song should be Chumbawumba's "Tubthumping."

I think that a Ken Bruen book is often greater than the sum of its parts. Despite three interweaving story lines, there's very little detection and almost no mystery, just a lot of rainy Galway and some fabulous one-liners like the one in the title of this review (Jack Taylor describing his "nemesis," Father Malachy). And yet there's something about these books that sucks me in and forces me into Galway and a series of characters I'd avoid like the plague in real life.

Another thing struck me as I was reading CROSS: that Jack Taylor's approach to Galway is similar to Precious Ramotswe's view of Botswana. Both long for a simpler time where bonds of community remained intact and greed did not rule the world. Now that would be quite a short story: Jack Taylor meets Precious Ramotswe. I bet they'd end up the best of friends. But Jack and Grace Makutsi would be at loggerheads from the get-go....

First Line: It took them a time to crucify the kid.

Jack Taylor, free for the moment from drugs, booze and nicotine, would also like to be free of any sort of human involvement. He has a good reason for feeling this way: he brings pain and death to everyone he loves. His surrogate son, Cody, is lying in the hospital in a coma, and Jack visits everyday-- touching Cody, talking to him, trying to coax him back among the living.

In the meantime, dogs are going missing in a Galway neighborhood and one of the residents wants to hire Jack to find out what is happening. Ridge, his old friend from the Guards, lets her hair down. It seems she has a lump in her breast, and she's having a horrible time coping with all the males in the police force. When Jack says something about helping her, she then tells him that a boy has been found crucified, and if he could steer her to the killer, it could mean a promotion and better working conditions, and Jack can't say no.

It seems that everyone wants something from Jack, and he isn't sure he has anything left to give. At this point, the thought of disappearing sounds wonderful.

I normally have little patience for characters who are alcoholics or druggies. I can find alcoholics in my own family, and I have never ever understood the allure of drugs. However, depression I can understand, and Jack has more than his share. Through everything, his books have been the only friends who've never deserted him, and I can understand that, too. Perhaps that's why I cut Jack Taylor slack when I won't so many other characters in the same situation. I honestly don't know.

"As the barman put the drinks down, I wondered if I should ask him his name. But then we'd probably get friendly and something terrible would happen to him."


If Jack Taylor can get you hooked, then your emotional involvement can be very high. The ending of one of the books in this series had me cry out loud in pain and shock and despair. I just don't do that... but I did do it when reading about Jack Taylor.

One of the plot threads in Cross was a bit too predictable, but it's still a lean, mean, beautifully written book. At this point, I simply have to know what happens to Jack.

I feel quite sorry for Jack Taylor. Tragedy seems to follow him like one of those cartoon rain clouds that only stay over one person and continue to pour on them. Jack just can't seem to catch a break in his life. Every time he turns around, it seems, someone he knows is either seriously injured or killed.

This latest book by one of my favorite authors follows Jack on another of his journeys to Calvary. His "son" dies from an assassin's bullet which may have come from the gun of an old friend, and another former Guard who begins to work for Jack is found dead in the river.

There is a crucifixion, a horrific burning death, and Jack now musr wear a hearing aid! Jusr another example of growing old. In addition, Jack's female friend Ridge is waiting word on whether or not a lump she found is malignant. How much angst can one person take before cracking and returning to drinking? That's always the bottom line in these books: will Jack regress or not?

We are shown the more violent side of Jack in this book, with him being on the giving end of beatings and such, rather than receiving them. This is a very well-written book, as all of Mr. Bruen's are, but the depression and darkness do tend to get one down. That being said, the reader is constantly rooting for Jack to continue to fight off his devils and try to straighten out his life. Will he succeed? Read the book and discover for yourself!

"Cross" is the latest in the Jack Taylor series from Ken Bruen, Ireland's pre-eminent cop-noir fictionist (is that a word?).

Doesn't matter, if you're not familiar with his work, I envy you. Get the first in the series and follow them through. This is Celtic Noir at its best and Bruen again delivers with a love:hate protagonist you may not like, but will certainly love.

Former Guard, kicked out and persecuted for bringing bad press to Ireland's Guards (police), Taylor always manages to tick off the local constabulary while solving cases the politicos would rather be swept under the rug.

Do not be fooled into the Patteron book of the same name.

Just get them - all. Start at the beginning and prepare for a feast.

Bruen spins another lyrical suspenseful tale with Jack Taylor brooding about past loss while contemplating his future. Bruen is an aquired taste mixing violence and poetry with mystery and suspense, but once you've read and appreciated one of his books you are "hooked." Jack Taylor is an intriguing complex-character capable of extreme violence and extreme feeling. Ireland comes alive in these mysteries- you can almost see the places Bruen describes. Definitely a five star book.