Ken
Bruen's plots aren't why I read his Jack Taylor
series. It's rather the atmosphere that Bruen
has, over the Jack Taylor series, created memorably.
The plot, as before, is not all that surprising,
even for me. And the "Galway noir" installments
are the only mysteries I read right upon their
publication.
At
this stage, the fifth book on, many familiar elements:
ex-Garda Jack struggles not to go back to the
bottle. Old friends die or despise him. He has
fallen away from his brief bout of seeking inspiration
in his faith, and Fr Malachy, more nicotine ravaged
than ever, shows up needing Jack's assistance
in solving the decapitation of a pedophile priest,
apparently at the hands of one of his victims,
decades later. This is the main plot. Jack also
seeks out forgiveness from the parents of Serena
May, Cathy and Jeff, whose family's tragic story
featured in the previous book, 'The Dramatist'.
A
secondary thread follows Jack's former colleague
from the Guards, Ban Gharda Ní Iomaire,
or Ridge as Jack insists on anglicizing her surname,
as she is stalked. Cody, a young man who wants
Jack to employ him as his fellow investigator
into the stalking, predictably complicates Jack's
efforts to get his life on track and deal with
the sudden good fortune of choosing from three
places to live in rapidly yuppified, gentrified,
and stratified Galway city. He still buys his
clothes, always with the price included by Bruen
(!) from the charity shop Age Concern...an appropriate
name for Jack as he battles with his fragile condition
in his fifth decade of struggle physical and personal.
This
aspect provides for me the most poignant part
of the book. With each chapter preceded by a mordant
excerpt from Blaise Pascal's Pensees, the existential
despair Jack fights against darkens. The Church
has lost its power, its priests are suspected
upon their appearance in public amidst youths,
and as the narrator wonders at one point as he
finds a small lane near Eyre Square converted
to plush townhouses, he wants to shake a Euro-rich
jerk (he uses another noun) by his Armani tie.
'You know what happened to the people there?'
Jack's surrounded by Irish wanting to ape British
accents and American slang. Bruen captures with
bitter accuracy the growing loss of an Irish cultural
identity as wealth widens the gap in Galway and
the organic if much poorer community that he (and
his protagonist) grew up within shatters. Those
in charge there care little, with nearly no exceptions
in these pages, for the past of their historic
and scenic city. Cranes, construction, and always
more euros obliterate. Onslaughts of luxury flats
within and second homes outside the city show
how tenuous are the claims to tourists that this
city takes pride in its cultural heritage. Investors
call the shots in more ways than one. Those who
knew Jack once are themselves dying off. Those
who replace them may be from across the globe.
In this flux, Jack roams adrift. Many celebrate
the revival of the city, but Bruen, through Jack,
mourns the loss of community. It's rarer to find
a native now, in real-life or in fiction there.
Here's
a scene that sums it up. Jack passes where as
a boy he had been hoisted on his da's shoulders
to see JFK in his motorcade in 1963 pass that
central gathering place in the city. Now, winos
haunt it. "Renovations were in full swing.
The trees were gone, like civility, and workmen
were already digging up the park, driving jackhammers
into the green fresh soil. There's some deep metaphor
there but it's too sad to draw." (170) Jack
engages with his own literary forebears, and in
one instance that seems appended to rather than
part of the main story (this assembly of his elements
has always intrigued me in Bruen but it does frustrate
me as a critic wanting to see more polish in crafting
these narratives) Jack considers the weird life
of a real-life writer, David Goodis. Merton does
not ease Jack's pain now. Books line his shelves
but in this volume Jack reads much less. Bruen
likes to integrate presumably some of his own
favorite singers and writers into Jack's life.
This can also be rather clumsy at times as you
wait for a payoff that never comes. Although the
popular musical choices in this tale that takes
place in 2004 are as usual up to date and reflect
by their lyrics as heard by Jack his reactions
to his never-peaceful condition. Jack, like his
creator, reacts always against the type of yarn
we expect.
I
admit that the crimes often seem far less intriguing
than their investigator. Perhaps Bruen likes playing
with our expectations of what a gumshoe's supposed
to act like. As Jack tells us: "I've read
tons of crime fiction. I'm especially fond of
the private-eye stuff. All alcoholics are doomed
romantics and the notion of the doomed outsider
pitting against the odds, it's like the line from
the movie, 'You gotta love him.'" (156) We
do love Jack, as he again battles the forces of
hate inside his soul and around his city.
