sanctuary inspector dramatist anthology

books:

Once Were Cops: A Novel
Ken Bruen

St. Martin's Minotaur, 2008

Michael O'Shea is a member of Ireland's police force, known as The Guards. He's also a sociopath who walks a knife edge between sanity and all-out mayhem. When an exchange program is initiated and twenty Guards come to America and twenty cops from the States go to Ireland, Shay, as he's known, has his lifelong dream come true--he becomes a member of the NYPD. But Shay's dream is about to become New York's nightmare. Paired with an unstable cop ...

The Max

2 reviews
Ken Bruen, Jason Starr

Hard Case Crime, 2008

Delightfully Depraved
Max Fisher and Angela Petrakis, anti-hero and anti-heroine of Hard Case Crime's delightfully depraved series of mis-adventures (previous titles: "Bust" and "Slide") penned by Jason Starr and Ken Bruen, return in "The Max." Max is a homicidal, crack and booze-addled nebbish whose self-delusion is so all-encompassing he manages, despite his odiferous personality, to be thoroughly amusing. ...

Damn Near Dead: An Anthology of Geezer Noir

7 reviews
Duane Swierczynski, Laura Lippman, ...

Busted Flush Press, 2006

Black Diamonds
What a terrific anthology - kudo's to editor/author Duane Swierczynski for compiling this collection of short stories that define noir - hardboiled gems written with cracked asphalt and broken beer bottles; brown paper bags with cold cash or cheap whiskey or untraceable .38s. I found many of my favorite authors here - Bruen, Burton, Cotterill, Stella, Brewer, Gischler, Doolittle, and of course ...

The Guards: A Novel (Jack Taylor Series)

43 reviews
Ken Bruen

St. Martin's Minotaur, 2004

Familiar and unique
Bruen doesn't reinvent the murder mystery - he just shifts it's phasing and phrasing. Reading this, you're always comfortable with the genre and shaken by the interpretation. If you love murder mysteries, detective novels, or Irish humor, you'll be at home with this book. A quick read, you find yourself slowing so as not to finish too soon. Can't wait to read the next one...slowly...savoring it ...

Slide

8 reviews
Ken Bruen, Jason Starr

Hard Crime Case, 2007

A madcap ride with a one of the world' great sleezeballs, a serial killer, and a real operator
Following up where Bust leaves off, Slide is a rollicking good time ride with two of the main protagonists from the first book; Max Fisher, a hustler so driven he hustles himself first, and Angela Petrakos, a VERY calculating accomplice. They are joined by a plethora for characters who are well writ and capture the zeitgeist of a culture shot through with drugs, absolute worship of money, and ...

The Killing of the Tinkers: A Novel (Jack Taylor Series)

14 reviews
Ken Bruen

St. Martin's Minotaur, 2005

Reading Bruen is Addictive
The second novel in Bruen's series about the down-and-out Jack Taylor, ex-cop, sometime private detective, fulltime alcoholic, reading addict--with the new addition of coke to his arsenal-- practically starts where THE GUARDS left off without much of a break. It's almost as if you were reading a continuation of the previous novel. Taylor is hired this time to find the killers of a group of ...

The Dramatist: A Novel

16 reviews
Ken Bruen

St. Martin's Minotaur, 2006

Makes Hell Look Like a Happy Place
There is some small injustice in describing Ken Bruen's "The Dramatist" as simply "noir". While all of Bruen's writing is bleak - in-your-face crime fiction with no regard for inane political correctness or modern niceties, "The Dramatist" reads like a chainsaw to the gut - an emotional tour de force that will leave fragments of Bruen's broken prose haunting your subconscious weeks after you've ...

Priest: A Novel (Jack Taylor Series)

11 reviews
Ken Bruen

St. Martin's Minotaur, 2008

Irish Noir
There is no joy for Jack Taylor. This book is like a train wreck. A glorious , noir train wreck that you wouldn't look away from even if you could. The running dialog inside Jacks head is a fascinating window into the mind of a man that reads voraciously out of a desperate need to mask the pain. An excellent read for the hard boiled fan set.

Cross: A Novel (Jack Taylor Series)

11 reviews
Ken Bruen

St. Martin's Minotaur, 2008

Keeper of the Celtic Flame
Like Galway's cold driving rain blowing horizontal from the North Atlantic, Ken Bruen's prose assaults - relentless, penetrating, no immunity. But just when you're sure he's taken the reader to the limits of despair, Bruen pulls you back in like a Jameson's and a pint of the black. Not that there's any redemption, of course - not in Bruen's vernacular - as you know that your reprieve is ...

Bust (Hard Case Crime)

18 reviews
Ken Bruen, Jason Starr

Hard Case Crime, 2006

"Men don't want lunch, they want tits"
I found this book to be hysterical. I'm not sure how much you would understand if you weren't acquainted with Irish colloquialisms, which I am, maybe you would. I just laughed out loud every few pages at the relentlessly vulgar nature of all of these characters, conscious and unconsciously, how even the 'classy' ones were still common as muck. beautiful study of hard nut people tested to their ...

Calibre (Inspector Brant Series)

9 reviews
Ken Bruen

St. Martin's Minotaur, 2006

Noir as a Blunt Instrument
It's impossible to categorize Ken Bruen. His jarring, disjointed chronicles of crime follow no convention, and while his respect for the masters of pulp fiction: McBain Chandler Thompson is faithfully imbedded in his prose, Bruen mimics none of them. His style and his formulae are all his ...

Blitz (Inspector Brant Series)

7 reviews
Ken Bruen

St. Martin's Minotaur, 2004

First-Rate Irish Noir
Call it "Irish Noir," "Post-Modern Noir, " or whatever other adjective or descriptive phrase you can come up with; it matters not one bit. There's noir ... and then there's Ken Bruen. Blitz is the sequel to Bruen's The White Trilogy, a series of novels that introduced us to the cops in the South East London squad. A more dysfunctional collection of police officers would be hard to imagine. This ...

Sanctuary

1 review
Ken Bruen

Transworld Ireland, 2008

Brilliant!!
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 ...

Her Last Call to Louis MacNeice (Five Star Paperback)
Ken Bruen

Five Star, 2005

"If this thriller was any more hard-boiled, you'd be able to paint a face on it and roll it down the hill . . . Noir at its grungiest"- The Good Book Guide Cooper had done his time in prison. Now on the outside, he'd set up a legitimate business with Doc, who he'd met inside. They called themselves "Righteous Repo," and they even had an accountant. The repo firm did good business, but it wasn't anywhere near as exhilarating as the bank ...

American Skin

12 reviews
Ken Bruen

Justin, Charles & Co., 2007

One Solid Rip
This one, in spots, is as brutal as they get. In other spots, it's equally insightful and melancholy. The references come in torrents -- poets, musicians, authors. I've never seen a book reference Rory Gallagher before so Bruen gets extra bonus points for that, right there. The mix of Irish attitude and the harsh American desert southwest, both Tucson and Las Vegas, make this a special read. How ...

The Magdalen Martyrs (Jack Taylor Series)

13 reviews
Ken Bruen

St. Martin's Minotaur, 2006

A shot of Irish noir with a pint of cynicism
By now, I have read most of the Jack Taylor and Inspector Brant books. I discovered them recently, and have devoured them greedily. While I am drawn to the Brant novels for the cast of truly nasty cops in the relatively familiar setting of London, I have ultimately found the Taylor series to be more satisfying, while no less cynical. Jack Taylor, an ex-cop, carries on a heroic battle with ...

Rilke on Black (Mask Noir)

5 reviews
Ken Bruen

Five Star, 2005

Sleeper
I picked up Rilke on Black in a remainder lot somewhere and read it months later on a whim. For it's faults, this is a first novel of tremendous intensity by a writer whose works I now intend to hunt down. It's certainly energised me to track him and end up dashing this off. Stylistically, Bruen throws so many punches so rapidly in this first novel that it's hard to track down influences. ...

Ammunition (Inspector Brant Series)

6 reviews
Ken Bruen

St. Martin's Minotaur, 2007

A master of noir
Ireland is known for producing some of the greatest writers in Western literature. But few would consider Joyce or Yeats or Shaw to be mystery or crime writers. The prolific Galway writer, Ken Bruen, is an award-winning mystery author who has been called the "Celtic Dashiell Hammett." Bruen is changing the way Americans think about Irish writers by producing some of the best mysteries on the ...

Vixen (Inspector Brant Series)

6 reviews
Ken Bruen

St. Martin's Minotaur, 2005

terrific thriller
In London, Desk Sergeant Doyle receives the call about the bomb at the Paradise Cinema just before the explosion. The caller tells to cop to provide $300K or more bombs will ignite. The bomb was amateurish consisting of two sticks of dynamite and a simple timer with no one hurt. The second bomb a few days later proved a bit more sophisticated but still amateurish, but the extortion demand ...

A Fifth of Bruen: Early Fiction of Ken Bruen

3 reviews
Ken Bruen

Busted Flush Press, 2006

Best Mystery Writer Today
Every story from the first to the latest written by Ken Bruen has never disappointed me. He is the best writer of this style today. I read everything he writes and recommend it to all my contacts.

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