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Sanctuary Ken Bruen 9781848270176 Books

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Sanctuary Ken Bruen 9781848270176 Books

If you're still looking for a swift kick out of that vanilla pop crime rut filled with plastic characters and pedestrian prose, you haven't met Ken Bruen. Like his brawling bare knuckled protagonists, Bruen is unconventional, unadorned and incorrigible. He hacks out his blunt prose with a chain saw - raw, jarring, jagged. The Celtic Charles Butkowski.

"Sanctuary" is a blistering example of Bruen's craft. Ex-Guard Jack Taylor is back, his planned exodus to America waylaid by the breast cancer of his sometimes friend and all times adversary, Ridge of the female Guard, the Irish Ni Iomaire. Taylor receives an ominous letter promising the slaughter of two guards, a judge, a nun, and a child, signed by "Benedictus.". The first Guard has already died when Taylor stops in to see Galway police superintendent Clancy, a ferocious thug and former partner of Taylor when young beat cops. Though much alike excepting social position, Clancy has a visceral hate for the alcoholic and shiftless Taylor. Clancy dismisses both Taylor and the letter, continuing denial even as "accidents" continue to take the lives of named victims. Filling out the color in the brutal score are a gaggle of Taylor regulars - the nicotine-stained Father Malachy, onetime drug dealer and Zen master Stewart, and Jeff and Kathy, parents of the child who died under Taylor's watch - the core of the guilt that jarred Taylor's life from bent rails to a major train wreck. A neat twist in that old story adds another dimension of angst to a series that had already plumbed the lowest rings of Hell.

As always, Bruen leans on blunt prose and gritty chacters more than plots, mystery, or suspense. No exception here, and certainly no forensics, science, or real police work. Taylor is an accidental investigator at best, better at breaking legs than cracking cases. "Sanctuary" is a short and sweet lesson in anguish and pain that is not without nobility - in Bruen's twisted way - a drak ride of salvation that should not be missed.


Tags : Sanctuary [Ken Bruen] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. 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,Ken Bruen,Sanctuary,Transworld Ireland,1848270178,Crime & mystery,Fiction Mystery & Detective General

Sanctuary Ken Bruen 9781848270176 Books Reviews

As most readers know that have read this series, this novel is the 7th installment in The Jack Taylor series and, after reading all the other books in this series and without going into the details of the plot, I must admit that I find the lead character's personality wearing a little thin. I do admire Bruen's steadfastness in being true to the character but Taylor's unnecessary mean-spiritedness in certain situations has become somewhat off-putting. Yes, undoubtedly he has his issues but even when confronted with warmth and kindness, he is cynical, hard-edged and verbally lacerating. He can be quite nasty. Having said that, there are slivers of goodness there as he did stay in Galway to help Ridge through her illness. But these are just slivers. However, like an old friend who you can't separate ties with despite his faults, I will continue to read the remaining books in the series, hoping, but not expecting, that Taylor will have a metamorphosis in becoming more tolerable to other people and a more likeable character.
In my opinion, this may be the best Jack Taylor novel in this uniformly excellent series. It is rather short (about 200 pages) but it packs a whole lot of action and interesting dialogue on almost every page.

Once again Jack is besieged by all his old devils booze, drugs and general malaise. The weather, of course, is always around to add more depression to the plot, and the murders are typically gruesome. Once again a child is involved, and Jack and some of the characters from the previous novels are together again.

One can only feel sorry for Jack, despite his obvious weaknesses. No sooner does an old tragedy get lifted from his shoulders than another problem begins to drag him down. Deep down, howeve, he is an extremely decent and (dare I say) kindly man, and one who is easy to root for when it comes to straightening out his troubled and tangled life.

I hope very much that we have not heard the last from this man and his life and surroundings.
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.
For the current Irish genre of detective, using that word in its broadest sense, fiction, the pace, or lack therof, its peculiarly Irish themes, its obvious love of the southern parts of Ireland, this drunken, shambling wreck of a former respectable Garda officer lurches his way, apparently in a drunken haze, which barely (and sometinmes does not) conceal his legendary loathing for the high and mighty of Ireland and their lawful constabulary. The authors capacity to draw on aspects of the Irish character are really remarkable and often quite insiteful and sometimes quite comical. The plot is not a sequential one but it is deliciously written and lurches about like Jack Taylor himself, an unlicensed private (or is that semi-public?) eye who, surviving on punches, bashings and beatings, somehow crawls thru fire and ice to sort out the mere local villians from the real criminals. He has a true apostates intense dislike of the Catholic church heirarchy, but a solid respect for some of its less hypocritical priests and nuns.
A great book for the widely read but avid devourer of the "detective" genre.
If you're still looking for a swift kick out of that vanilla pop crime rut filled with plastic characters and pedestrian prose, you haven't met Ken Bruen. Like his brawling bare knuckled protagonists, Bruen is unconventional, unadorned and incorrigible. He hacks out his blunt prose with a chain saw - raw, jarring, jagged. The Celtic Charles Butkowski.

"Sanctuary" is a blistering example of Bruen's craft. Ex-Guard Jack Taylor is back, his planned exodus to America waylaid by the breast cancer of his sometimes friend and all times adversary, Ridge of the female Guard, the Irish Ni Iomaire. Taylor receives an ominous letter promising the slaughter of two guards, a judge, a nun, and a child, signed by "Benedictus.". The first Guard has already died when Taylor stops in to see Galway police superintendent Clancy, a ferocious thug and former partner of Taylor when young beat cops. Though much alike excepting social position, Clancy has a visceral hate for the alcoholic and shiftless Taylor. Clancy dismisses both Taylor and the letter, continuing denial even as "accidents" continue to take the lives of named victims. Filling out the color in the brutal score are a gaggle of Taylor regulars - the nicotine-stained Father Malachy, onetime drug dealer and Zen master Stewart, and Jeff and Kathy, parents of the child who died under Taylor's watch - the core of the guilt that jarred Taylor's life from bent rails to a major train wreck. A neat twist in that old story adds another dimension of angst to a series that had already plumbed the lowest rings of Hell.

As always, Bruen leans on blunt prose and gritty chacters more than plots, mystery, or suspense. No exception here, and certainly no forensics, science, or real police work. Taylor is an accidental investigator at best, better at breaking legs than cracking cases. "Sanctuary" is a short and sweet lesson in anguish and pain that is not without nobility - in Bruen's twisted way - a drak ride of salvation that should not be missed.