Synopses & Reviews
Review
PRAISE FOR KEN BRUEN"Ken Bruen is hard to resist, with his aching Irish heart, silvery tongue, and bleak noir sensibility Bruen writes with extraordinary delicacy about a man driven to acts of violence out of wild grief and a fierce sense of guilt."
Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review
"Bruen is an original, grimly hilarious and gloriously Irish. I await the further adventures of the incorrigible Jack Taylor."Patrick Anderson, Washington Post
"Bruen is a brilliant, lyrical, deeply moving writer who can make you laugh and cry in the same paragraph and whose characters are so sharply portrayed that they almost walk off the page at you. If you like Ian Rankin, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, and the like, Bruen is definitely a writer to reckon with."
The Denver Post
"Bruen's furious, hard-boiled prose, chopped down to its trademark essence, never fails to astonish.... among the finest noir stylists of his generation." Publishers Weekly
"Bruen's tommy-gun prose, lacerating dialogue, and hard-boiled worldview combine to provide entertainment of high order in dealing with low instincts."New York Daily News
"The next major new Irish voice we hear might well belong to Ken Bruen."Chicago Tribune
"Spare and unforgiving, Bruen's novels are among the best."Rocky Mountain News
"Ken Bruen is a supremely bold and confident stylist."Jocelyn Clark, Sunday Tribune (Ireland)
"A Celtic Dashiell Hammett."Philadelphia Inquirer
Review
Praise for HeadstoneHard hitting ... a remarkable series.”—Publishers Weekly
Headstone is an excellent addition to the Jack Taylor series.”—Philadelphia Inquirer
Ken Bruen is brilliant. While HEADSTONE is the stuff of nightmares, it is also the stuff of redemption, even at great cost. You will feel wrung out after reading this one, but all the gladder for it.”—Bookreporter
Headstone is one of the year's best reading pleasures.”—Crime Fiction Dossier
Bruen is threatening to become a mass cult figure in the U.S. as well as a critical favorite.”—Allen Barra, The Atlantic
A nonstop rampage of intrigue, mayhem, lunacy and dark-dark-dark humor.”—Shelf Awareness
"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
A welcome entry. B+.”—Avid Mystery Reader
Synopsis
Some people help the less fortunate. Others kill them. Welcome to Headstone Jack Taylor’s darkest nightmare.An elderly priest is viciously beaten until nearly dead. A special needs boy is brutally attacked. Evil has many guises. Jack Taylor has encountered most of them but nothing before has ever truly terrified him until a group called Headstone rears its ugly head. A series of seemingly random, insane, violent events has even the national police, the Guards, shaken.
Most would see a headstone as a marker of the dead, but this coterie of evil intends to act as a death knell to every aspect of Jack’s life as an act of appalling violence alerts him to the horror enveloping Galway.
Accepting the power of Headstone, Jack realizes that in order to fight back he must relinquish the remaining shreds of what has made him human--knowledge that may have come too late to prevent an act of such ferocious evil that the whole country would be changed forever--and in the worst way.
With awful clarity, Jack knows that not only might he be powerless to stop it but that he may not have the grit needed to even face it.
Synopsis
Acclaimed Irish crime writer Ken Bruen has won numerous awards for his hard-charging, dark thrillers, which have been translated into ten languages. In
Headstone, an elderly priest is nearly beaten to death and a special-needs boy is brutally attacked. Evil has many guises and Jack Taylor has encountered most of them. But nothing before has ever truly terrified him until he confronts an evil coterie named Headstone, who have committed a series of random, insane, violent crimes in Galway, Ireland.
Most would see a headstone as a marker of the dead, but this organization seems like it will act as a death knell to every aspect of Jacks life. Jacks usual allies, Ridge and Stewart, are also in the line of terror. An act of appalling violence alerts them to the sleeping horror, but this realization may be too late, as Headstone barrels along its deadly path right to the center of Jacks life and the heart of Galway. A terrific read from a writer called a Celtic Dashiell Hammett,” Headstone is an excellent addition to the Jack Taylor series (Philadelphia Inquirer)