Ken Bruen has been called “hard to resist, with his aching Irish heart, silvery tongue, and bleak noir sensibility” (New York Times Book Review). His prose is as characteristically sharp as his outlook in the latest Jack Taylor novel, In the Galway Silence.

After much tragedy and violence, Jack Taylor has at long last landed at contentment. Of course, he still knocks back too much Jameson and dabbles in uppers, but he has a new woman in his life, a freshly bought apartment, and little sign of trouble on the horizon. Once again, trouble comes to him, this time in the form of a wealthy Frenchman who wants Jack to investigate the double-murder of his twin sons. Jack is meanwhile roped into looking after his girlfriend’s nine-year-old son, and is in for a shock with the appearance of a character out of his past. The plot is one big chess game and all of the pieces seem to be moving at the behest of one dangerously mysterious player: a vigilante called “Silence,” because he’s the last thing his victims will ever hear.

This is Ken Bruen at his most darkly humorous, his most lovably bleak, as he shows us the meaning behind a proverb of his own design—“the Irish can abide almost anything save silence.”

Praise for In the Galway Silence

“Jack, as fans of this long-running series know all too well, has a gift for blarney, for plain speaking, for poetic melancholy, for downing shots of Jameson’s without ice, and for pregnant one-word paragraphs. . . . A tough, tender, sorrowful tour of the Bruen aquarium, with all manner of fantastic creatures swimming in close proximity and touching only the fellow creatures they want to devour. Just don’t get too attached to the supporting cast or read this installment just before a trip to Galway.”―Kirkus Reviews

“Powered by nonstop action and acerbic wit, [In the Galway Silence] is—like the pints of Guinness that the saga’s existentially tortured, pill-popping antihero consumes on a daily basis—unfathomably dark. [Jack Taylor is] a deeply flawed but endearing character whose suffering is both tragic and transformative.” ―Publishers Weekly

Praise for Ken Bruen and the Jack Taylor series:

“[Bruen] writes short, rat-a-tat sentences that suggest a meeting of Samuel Beckett and Ogden Nash.”―Chicago Tribune, on The Ghosts of Galway

“Nobody writes like Ken Bruen, with his ear for lilting Irish prose and his taste for the kind of gallows humor heard only at the foot of the gallows. The Emerald Lie is pure Bruen, with its verbal tics, weird typography and unorthodox wordplay.”—New York Times Book Review, on The Emerald Lie

“Taylor is a classic figure: an ex-cop turned seedy private eye . . . The book’s pleasure comes from listening to Taylor’s eloquent rants, studded with references to songs and books. His voice is wry and bittersweet, but somehow always hopeful.”—Seattle Times, on Green Hell

“Bruen’s voice is unmistakable: finely chiseled paragraphs that more closely resemble verse than prose . . . Bleaker than David Goodis, colder than Derek Raymond, and funnier and more violent than Richard Stark, Ken Bruen is among the most original and innovative noir voices of the last two decades.”—Los Angeles Review of Books, on Headstone

“One of the most sublime pleasures in crime fiction is reading a new book by Ken Bruen. For almost twenty years now, he’s been delighting mystery and noir audiences with his stunning, poetic books of the shadowy side of life . . . This is real writing, the likes of which we are blessed to behold.”—Strand Magazine, on Purgatory

“No one writes crime novels quite like Ken Bruen . . . I picture Bruen not so much writing as transcribing the words of a sweet fallen angel that are whispered feverishly into his ear.”—Bookreporter, on The Emerald Lie

“[A] dark and often hilarious . . . series.”―Toronto Star, on The Ghosts of Galway

“Bruen gets more done in a paragraph, a word, even a fragment of a word, than most writers get in an entire four-hundred-page doorstop. If his prose was any sharper, your eyeballs would bleed.”—Mystery Scene, on Green Hell

“The Godfather of the modern Irish crime novel.”—Irish Independent, on Green Hell

Excerpt

I didn’t want to investigate the murder of the twins. To immerse in darkness again was a road I had no wish to travel. Battered and wounded by all the loss of previous cases, I had barely managed to survive. Beatings, attacks, had left me with

Mutilated fingers

Hearing problems

A limp

Lethal dreams

And

A shitload of anxiety that Xanax barely kept a lid on. With a new woman in my life and happy for the very first time, would I risk it all?

Nope.

But.

It is that very but that has led me astray so many times. A sly curiosity niggled at me so I figured

“Vague inquiries couldn’t hurt.”