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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Jack Taylor v. the Dark Lord, August 26, 2010
This review is from: The Devil (Paperback)
This is a creepy and terrifying book, and possibly the best one in the Jack Taylor series. Jack is still stumbling around Galway, and a series of gruesome murders sets him on the path of discovering th e killer. What he discovers has his world turned almost upside down, for he comes to believe that the killer is the Devil himself. How he came to that conclusion I'll leave for the reader to discover.
Once he makes that discovery he sets out to combat this evil, but those he seeks for assistance tend to end up quite dead. The ending is brutal and shocking, but even though the reader, and Jack, believe that it's all over, something appears in the paper to shake his conviction.
Ken Bruen is a master of suspense and this book gives it in spades. It's a real page turner. I was so caught up in it that I finished it in just a few hours of reading, determined as I was to find out how it ends. I then gave it to my son, who is also a big Ken Bruen fan, to read, and he had the same feeling about the book that I had, and he finished it in rapid order. Do yourself a favor; if you enjoy Ken Bruen's writing don't miss this book!
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Jack Taylor vs. the Devil, September 4, 2010
Ken Bruen is back with a new noir masterpiece. My favorite character, Jack Taylor is continuing on adventures only Ken Bruen can think off. The story starts off with Jack wanting to go to America but he is not allowed to go and in the process meets his new adversary, the Devil. This new one is the darkest of them all. Taylor finally encounters real evil which is not to say that in some of his earlier exploits he did not also meet some pretty evil people. This new situation is his darkest and most helpless.
However, as Bruen points out, real Irishmen always have HOPE. It is a virtue that has sustained the Irish from earliest times. Once an Irishman loses hope then it is all over. Taylor may get himself in tight situations but he is a survivor. He is also not one to back down. In the politically correct world we live in it is enjoyable to see that not everyone conforms. Bruen knows how to satirize current society and points out where we have lost our humanity in our desire for materialism.
I enjoy Bruen's books for several reasons. I like the fast pace unpredictable action. You never know what is going to happen and you don't know if the situation is going to turn around or only get worse. Just like real life. I also like the Galway references. I lived in Galway for a time and my mother was born near Galway. I have walked past many of the locations he mentions and it brings back good memories. Many a day I wish I could walk to Supermacs knowing that things will only get better with the ingestion of a little natural grease. I also enjoy the religious references. Irishmen of my generation are indelibly marked by religion. Even if we try to get away we can't. Bruen's quotes such as: `Expect nothing, and by Christ, you're entitled to even less" hit home with me. For all of Bruen's skepticisms there is the deep mark of someone who is a seeker of belief. This seeking sustains characters such as Jack Taylor. While Bruen's characters such as Taylor may have fallen they have not given up. The same is true for Bruen's books. They never quite end. Just when you expect a conclusion we are off on a new story and we begin waiting for the next book.
I highly recommend this book and the others Bruen has written.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Evil hones in on those closest to redemption.", November 8, 2011
Bruen speaks best to the consciously damned nurturing nascent hope in their rebellious hearts, protagonist Jack Taylor a man so obviously degraded by appetites to sustain against the looming dark of civilization that his Irish soul glows with the effort. Time and loss have distilled DI Taylor into a potent cocktail of drugs and alcohol, Jameson neat with a pint of Guinness, a few Xanax for a kick. In perhaps his most descriptive struggle with the forces of light and dark, Taylor, ex-Garda to his very roots, lashes out with the usual ferocity at the senseless violence of students misguided enough to follow "the One" and the desecrated bodies of helpless victims who have offered words of kindness to Jack. It seems Taylor is besieged by "the Divil", or Mr. K, a malevolent force by turns seducing, taunting and torturing a man whose shabby life is banked on the fires of his ire on behalf of the helpless and the downtrodden. It is a battle perhaps of unequals, but don't count the boozy, Xanax-addled Taylor out, the grit and strength of the old country bred into the marrow of his bones. In his scattershot of staccato prose, Bruen drives the narrative from Taylor's first encounter with Mr. K to the last, a blend of violence, the metaphysical, the deepest sorrow of a country on its economic knees but always up for a pint or a fight. This is Bruen at his best, pure and unadulterated, Jack a wounded human howling at a dismissive God and hurling himself at the gates of hell, but without any intention of entering there soon. No, this is a man who craves salvation like bitter mother's milk, a man who has chosen the hardest route to peace because it is the only way he knows, a protagonist who quenches the thirst and burns all the way through. Luan Gaines/2011.
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