A Galway Epiphany: A Jack Taylor Novel

At the start of Edgar finalist Bruen’s overly busy 16th Jack Taylor novel (after 2019’s Galway Girl), the former Garda and Galway PI is struck by a truck and ends up comatose in a hospital. Upon awakening weeks later, he finds Galway obsessed with miracles after the Virgin Mary seems to have appeared to a pair of refugee children on the city’s waterfront. (That Jack comes out of his coma with no mental confusion or lasting physical damage is deemed another miracle.) When the “miracle children” disappear, the resulting public clamor leads a skeptical representative of the Vatican investigating the miracle to commission Jack to find the children. Meanwhile, a number of other cases—a California con artist, a cyberbully, a homicidal serial arsonist, and more—demand his attention. Throughout it all, Jack, disillusioned and angry at the world, struggles to pull himself together after his daughter’s murder in Galway Girl, but the violent conclusion leaves him in a darker place than ever. The sheer number of individual plot threads means that none are fully developed, and their resolutions come too easily. The result is a readable but not particularly memorable entry in an otherwise strong series. Agent: Lukas Ortiz, Philip G. Spitzer Literary. (Nov.)