Books by Ken Bruen and Complete Book Reviews

Ken Bruen, Author . Minotaur $24.99 (256p) ISBN 978-0-312-56168-0
First published in the U.K. in 2001 and presently being adapted for the movies, Bruen's gritty reimagining of Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard transplants the action from glitzy Hollywood to the rough and tumble London streets. Fresh out...
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Ken Bruen. Mysterious, $26 (320p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2882-9
Powered by nonstop action and acerbic wit, Edgar-finalist Bruen’s 14th novel featuring ex-cop Jack Taylor (after 2017’s The Ghosts of Galway) is—like the pints of Guinness that the saga’s existentially tortured, pill-popping antihero consumes on a...
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Ken Bruen. Mysterious, $25 (336p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2733-4
Jack Taylor, Bruen’s perennially tortured protagonist, suffers new levels of angst in his 13th noir outing (after 2016’s The Emerald Lie). Recovering from a failed suicide attempt after a mistaken diagnosis of terminal cancer, Taylor is trying to...
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Ken Bruen. Mysterious, $25 (352p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2546-0
Brooding thoughts of suicide and loss haunt Jack Taylor in Irish author Bruen’s desultory 12th novel featuring the Galway PI and former Garda officer (after 2015’s Green Hell). Of course, Jack is also preoccupied with lists of the authors he has...
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Ken Bruen. Grove/Atlantic/Mysterious, $25 (304p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2356-5
American Rhodes scholar Boru Kennedy, who narrates much of Shamus Award–winner Bruen’s sketchy 11th Jack Taylor novel (after 2013’s Purgatory), has come to Galway to write a treatise on Samuel Beckett. When muggers start kicking in Boru’s teeth,...
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Ken Bruen. Grove/Atlantic/Mysterious, $24 (288p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2607-8
Edgar-finalist Bruen’s excellent 10th Jack Taylor novel (after 2011’s Headstone) finds the Irish PI looking upon the sights of Galway with now-sober if ever-wistful eyes—but a serial killer wants him to come out and play. Signing invitations to Jack
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Ken Bruen. Grove Atlantic/Mysterious, $24 (240p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2600-9
Irish author Bruen’s hard-hitting ninth Jack Taylor novel (after The Devil) finds the Galway PI coping with alcoholism, a permanent limp, hearing loss, and emotional scars that continually threaten to take him down. For once, however, Taylor appears
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Ken Bruen, Author Do-Not Press $29.95 (288p) ISBN 978-1-904316-01-5
In Blitz: Or... Brant Hits the Blues, Irish author Ken Bruen's follow-up to his White Trilogy (Forecasts, Feb. 3), a vicious serial killer starts going after cops. As if Brant and the other burnt-out members of the South East London police squad...
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Ken Bruen, Author Do-Not Press $29.95 (153p) ISBN 978-1-899344-61-1
With The McDead, Ken Bruen completes his funny, raunchy White Trilogy (A White Arrest; Taming the Alien). Odd couple Chief Inspector Roberts and Detective Sergeant Brant hunt down the murderer of Roberts's brother, against an amusing backdrop of
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Ken Bruen, Author Do-Not Press $15.95 (156p) ISBN 978-1-899344-22-2
A gay, manic-depressive, thoroughly disreputable ex-con with a violent streak, Tony Brady is also vibrantly alive and capable of dropping insightful quotes from Genet, Baldwin or Maupin gleaned from his prison reading. At the beginning of this slang-
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Ken Bruen, Author Do-Not Press $14.95 (268p) ISBN 978-1-904316-00-8
In Blitz: Or... Brant Hits the Blues, Irish author Ken Bruen's follow-up to his White Trilogy (Forecasts, Feb. 3), a vicious serial killer starts going after cops. As if Brant and the other burnt-out members of the South East London police squad...
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Ken Bruen, Author Minotaur Books $14.99 (208p) ISBN 978-0-312-32730-9
This new installment in Shamus-winner Bruen's Southeast London police squad thriller series-the little brother to the author's Jack Taylor mysteries-reunites the reader with the incorrigible Inspector Brant, Sergeant Doyle, Police Constable Falls...
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Ken Bruen, Author Minotaur Books $14.99 (272p) ISBN 978-0-312-32726-2
Fans of Irish author Ken Bruen will find the same poetic spareness and jaded romanticism in Blitz, an entry in his series about the South East London police squad, that mark the Edgar finalist's better-known Jack Taylor series (The Guards, etc.).
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Ken Bruen, Minotaur, $24.99 (208p) ISBN 978-0-312-64696-7
In Bruen's atmospheric, metaphysically tinged eighth Jack Taylor novel, the Galway PI clashes with Satan himself—or so all the clues scream. Denied passage to America at the airport in Ireland, Jack decides Xanax isn't enough and hits the bar for a...
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Ken Bruen, Author . St. Martin's Minotaur $23.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-30355-6
Bruen flaunts genre clichés (the tough cop who loves books; the beating victim who insists on checking himself out of a hospital too soon) on virtually every page of this outstanding debut mystery. He gets away with it thanks to his novel...
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Ken Bruen, Author . Minotaur $24.95 (203p) ISBN 978-0-312-38441-8
At the start of Edgar-finalist Bruen’s lean seventh Jack Taylor novel, the aging, alcoholic Irish ex-cop, who moved to the U.S. in 2008’s The Cross , knows he really ought to be in America, but he’s staying in Galway because his...
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Ken Bruen, Author . St. Martin's Minotaur $22.95 (294p) ISBN 978-0-312-38440-1
In this stripped-down dark thrill ride from Edgar-finalist Bruen (The Guards ), a psychotic Irish cop, Matthew Patrick O'Shea (“everybody called me Shea”), blackmails his way into a green card and a police exchange program that...
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Ken Bruen, Author . St. Martin’s Minotaur $23.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-34142-8
In Shamus-winner Bruen’s brilliant sixth Jack Taylor novel (after 2007’s Priest ), the tormented Galway detective feels like a ghost in a newly prosperous city that little resembles his birthplace. Years of alcoholic dissipation have...
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Ken Bruen, Author . St. Martin's Minotaur $13.95 (226p) ISBN 978-0-312-34145-9
The seventh Inspector Brant noir from Shamus-winner Bruen (after 2006's Calibre ) maintains the feverish pacing that has become Bruen's trademark. As incorrigible hardcase Brant sits in a London pub brooding about the recent demise of his...
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Ken Bruen, Author . St. Martin's Minotaur $23.95 (290p) ISBN 978-0-312-34140-4
Recovered from incapacitating guilt over the death of a child on his watch, Jack Taylor is released from the loony bin at the start of Shamus-winner Bruen's searing fifth book about the alcoholic Galwegian ex-cop (after 2006's The Dramatist )
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Ken Bruen, Author . Justin, Charles/Kate's Mystery $24.95 (280p) ISBN 978-1-932112-47-4
At the start of Bruen's dark tribute to the Irish fascination with the American dream, Stephen Blake is on the run after a bank heist, hoping to disappear in the desert near Tucson. He has the money, and his girlfriend, Siobhan, knows how to...
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Ken Bruen, Author . St. Martin's Minotaur $12.95 (182p) ISBN 978-0-312-34144-2
In Bruen's superb new pulp-inspired novel featuring Inspector Brant (after 2005's Vixen ), the Southeast London Police Squad is plagued by a serial murderer who's determined to give his victims a lesson in manners. Taking a cue from Jim...
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Ken Bruen, Author . St. Martin's Minotaur $22.95 (242p) ISBN 978-0-312-31647-1
Last seen in Bruen's The Magdalen Martyrs (2004), Irish detective Jack Taylor is sober and hating it in his stellar fourth outing. Things are looking up for the well-worn detective—at least until the apparently accidental death of the...
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Ken Bruen, Author . St. Martin's Minotaur $22.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-312-31645-7
If not as explosive as The Guards (2003) or The Killing of the Tinkers (2004), Edgar finalist Bruen's third Jack Taylor noir mystery-thriller crackles with his trademark tough-guy bravado. While Taylor struggles to stay on the wagon, he agrees
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Ken Bruen, Author . St. Martin's Minotaur $22.95 (244p) ISBN 978-0-312-30411-9
With his second Jack Taylor crime novel (after 2003's The Guards ), Irish author Bruen confirms his rightful place among the finest noir stylists of his generation. A year after the newly sober Jack Taylor left Galway to start a new life in...
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Ken Bruen, Author . Justin, Charles/Kate's Mystery $14.95 (399p) ISBN 978-1-932112-02-3
Hip, violent and funny vignettes of the mean streets of southeast London tie together this rowdy set of short novels by Bruen (The Guards), a modern Irish master of the hard-boiled. Collecting A White Arrest (1998), Taming the Alien (1999) and The
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Ken Bruen, Author, Reed Farrel Coleman, Author . Busted Flush $15 (172p) ISBN 978-1-935415-07-7
Divided into two halves, this short, brutally poetic tour of the underside of Brooklyn, Boston and Philadelphia marks the first collaboration between noir masters Bruen (The Guards ) and Coleman (The James Deans ). Drawing on the classic theme of...
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Ken Bruen, Author, Jason Starr, Author . Hard Case Crime $6.99 (221p) ISBN 978-0-8439-5776-1
Bruen and Starr follow up last year's Bust with another dark, twisted, no-holds-barred tale that hits all the noir buttons and then some. Since he was betrayed by his mistress/former assistant, Angela Petrakos, who left him with nothing to his
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Ken Bruen, Author, Jason Starr, Author . Hard Case Crime $6.99 (254p) ISBN 978-0-8439-5591-0
This first-time collaboration between two rising crime fiction writers is a full-tilt, rocking homage to noir novels of the 1950s, taking full advantage of the neo-pulp Hard Case Crime imprint. Wealthy, successful New York City business owner Max...
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Ken Bruen and Jason Starr. Hard Case Crime, $9.95 trade paper (240p) ISBN 978-1-78329-569-2
In Bruen and Starr’s scattershot fourth Max Fisher noir (after 2008’s The Max), a new designer drug called PIMP (an acronym for peyote, insulin, mescaline, and psychosis) is poised to give the ne’er-do-well New York City “businessman” (i.e., drug...
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Ken Bruen. Mysterious, $26 (288p) ISBN 978-0-8021-4793-6
In Bruen’s superior 15th Jack Taylor novel (after 2018’s In the Galway Silence), killers stalk PI Taylor, once a member of the Garda, through Galway. Jericho, a femme fatale for whom “everyone was the enemy,” cracks the whip on her fellow psychos as
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Ken Bruen. MysteriousPress.com/Open Road, $14.99 trade paper (250p) ISBN 978-1-5040-6729-4
Early in this propulsive standalone from Edgar finalist Bruen (the Jack Taylor series), Brooklyn resident Kate Mitchell, who’s struggling to kick a heroin habit, wakes up from an alcohol-induced bender to find a letter from an Irish lawyer informing
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Ken Bruen. Mysterious Press, $26.95 (264p) ISBN 978-1-61316-479-2
At the start of the satisfyingly complex 17th entry in Bruen’s Jack Taylor series, the Irish PI has just awakened from a two-year coma caused by the climactic assault in Galway Epiphany. As Jack tries to adjust to the impact Covid-19 has had on...
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