Sanctuary [Import] [Mass Market Paperback]

Ken Bruen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 25, 2009

When a letter containing a list of victims arrives in the post, PI Jack Taylor is sickened, but tells himself the list has nothing to do with him. He has enough to do just staying sane. His close friend Ridge is recovering from surgery and alcohol’s siren song is calling to him ever more insistently.

A guard and then a judge die in mysterious circumstances.

But it is not until a child is added to the list that Taylor determines to find the identity of the killer, and put a stop to the killings at any cost.

What he doesn’t know is that his relationship with the killer is far closer than he thinks, and that it’s about to become deeply personal.

Spiked with dark humour, seasoned with acute insights into the perils of urbanization, and fuelled by rage at man’s inhumanity to man, this is crime-writing at its darkest and most original.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the start of Edgar-finalist Bruen's lean seventh Jack Taylor novel, the aging, alcoholic Irish ex-cop, who moved to the U.S. in 2008's The Cross, knows he really ought to be in America, but he's staying in Galway because his old police partner, Ridge, has developed breast cancer. Meanwhile, he's received a shopping list of intended victims—two guards, one nun, one judge and one child—from the mysterious Benedictus. One is already dead, killed in an unfortunate hit and run, according to Superintendent Clancy, Taylor's best friend from years earlier on the force, who dismisses Taylor's fear that a serial killer is on the loose. Bruen's trademark terse style is more perfunctory than not, and parts of the narrative read like an outline, as shown by previous cases synopsized in quick asides. Taylor confronts the unlikely killer in what is a less than convincing showdown. Still, series fans should follow Taylor's current fall off the wagon, suffused by the mellow glow of Xanax, with the usual passionate interest. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Soul-sick former Garda detective Jack Taylor is ready to move to America. Nearly everyone he ever cared about is dead. Former friends despise him. Even a letter from an apparent psycho threatening the lives of cops, a nun, a judge, and a child can’t change his plans. But when Ridge, his former partner, is diagnosed with cancer, he stays to support her: “It’s God’s own vicious joke, the only woman I managed to keep in my life was gay.” Eventually, Taylor rouses himself to find the killer, but only after another 150-page howl of anguish at his own failings, the “new Ireland,” priests, the smoking ban in pubs, et al. Along the way, he is brutally beaten on the order of his former friend, the Garda superintendent, and he falls off the wagon. (After two lost weeks, his recovery regimen is 10 drinks a day and a Xanax.) Taylor’s howl is corrosively funny and filled with insights into modern Ireland, but the resolution is perfunctory, just as it was in Cross (2008). Fans of the Taylor series may wonder if they’ve already read this one. --Thomas Gaughan --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Transworld Ireland (May 25, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1848270186
• ISBN-13: 978-1848270183
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,350,748 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!!, August 5, 2008

By 

L. J. Roberts (Oakland, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sanctuary (Hardcover)

First Sentence: Dear Mr. Taylor, Please forgive the formality.

Jack Taylor has sold his apartment and is ready to head to the US when his friend, Ridge, announces she has malignant breast cancer, so he stays to help her. He then receives the letter stating two guards, one nun, one judge and a child will die and he is to be witness.

His once friend, now enemy, Guarda Superintendent Clancy, doesn't give it any credence, but Jack does follows up, with the help of now-recovered Ridge and other friends.

I begin each new Bruen book afraid the quality won't be has high as the last. I had nothing to fear.

Bruen is not for everyone: Jack is a character you don't necessarily like, but about whom you do care. The story is hard-edged, violent and emotional. The alternating voices of conversational first person and chilling third person is extremely effective.

Bruen's descriptions of the city, observations on the changes prosperity have wrought on Galway, as well as dark humor and sensitivity make him a remarkable writer. The story and writing are spare, brutal, physically and emotionally harsh, tragic and brilliant.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best (and hopefully not the last!) Jack Taylor novels, March 7, 2010

By 

Elizabeth Ray (Stockton, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Sanctuary: A Novel (Jack Taylor Novels) (Hardcover)

After his move to America is derailed by Ridge's illness, a sober Jack Taylor is pulled back into the investigation game when a religious psycho gives him (and only him) the clues necessary to prevent her murder of a child.

This may be my favorite Jack Taylor book yet. The plot is compelling and the pacing is almost thriller-like. There is also a revelation regarding an major event from one of the previous books. As usual, Bruen's sparse prose is full of humor so dry you'd miss it if you weren't paying attention. My only complaint is that despite a visit to his bookseller, this installment offered no new reading recommendations for me.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not his best, but anything Bruen writes set a high bar, August 2, 2009

By 

Jeff (Northern California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Sanctuary (Mass Market Paperback)

I really enjoyed Sanctuary. Like most of the Jack Taylor series, it flies by. The prose is sparse, well constructed, and frequently ironic or sarcastic in the extreme. Bruen's very fond of delivering trenchant observations about what is happening to his beloved Galway. He gets off some of his very best observations of the series in Sanctuary.

Another reader has commented that he did not do anything quite so new here in this book as he has in a few others. I'd agree, but he also interjects an element into the series's storyline that is pretty important for future books in the series.

Bruen's quite the fan of the "...nasty, brutish, and short" school of thought on human life. However, the central motif of the whole series is his nearly inchoate rage at how badly humans can treat other humans (and themselves.) Bruen's humanity is in fine shape and this is quite a worthwhile addition to the Jack Taylor canon.