The Killing of the Tinkers (Jack Taylor) [ペーパーバック]

This is an odd, but thoroughly enjoyable, novel. Set in Galway, Ireland, Jack Taylor is an alcoholic and cocaine addict, recently bounced from the Guards. He arrives back in Galway, looks up old friends, consumes quantities of booze and coke and is approached by a man who wants him to help solve the murders of several "tinkers," formerly known in less politically correct days as Gypsies.

Taylor's approach to things is, putting it mildly, chaotic. He is given to a love of old rock 'n roll music, has an expectedly odd assortment of friends, makes enemies easily and suffers fierce hangovers.

But he does solve the mystery in the end in an unpredictable way.

Overall, Bruen's writing is wonderfully quirky. Jack Taylor is a well developed character; so well-developed, in fact, that he's not particularly likeable. Most of the other characters are kind of thing, but passable.

The plot . . . well, it isn't a smooth and winding road, that's for sure. But the twists are fun to roll with. A satisfying excursion with an author with a unique approach. If half-stars were a possibility, I'd give it four and a half. Not quite a five, but well worth reading.

Jerry

At the end of THE GUARDS, the prequel to this book, Jack Taylor leaves Ireland for London. Now he's back, although any sign of a fanfare for his return is sadly missing. I though Ken Bruen took Jack Taylor just about as low as it is possible to take a character in THE GUARDS, but he's managed to follow that dark excursion up by plunging him into an even deeper canyon in THE KILLING OF THE TINKERS.

He's not long back home when he is sought out by a man who needs his help. Of course, Jack is in a pub at the time and has no problem listening to the man, a tinker named Sweeper. He explains that someone has been savagely murdering, occasionally including dismemberment, the young men from his clan. The feelings towards the tinkers (sometimes otherwise known as gypsies) range from dislike to fear and hatred, so the suspect pool could be very large. Sweeper has resorted to turning to Taylor for help because the Garda Siochana (the Irish police force), of which Taylor used to be a member, have not bothered to investigate preferring to write the deaths off as the result of a feud between tinker families.

It's a pretty grim sounding situation and a difficult case, but when the offer of free accommodation is included with a healthy pay packet, jack can't refuse.

Just because he has agreed to take the case, taken the tinker's money and moved into a tinker's house, it doesn't mean he will throw himself into a full-scale investigation. His intentions are honorable, mind you, but the temptations of the many pubs see him succumbing all too often, mixing his alcohol consumption with a steady supply of cocaine.

He makes progress on the case thanks mainly to the help of a policeman friend from London, but there are external factors that also adversely affect his progress. When he isn't being harassed by his ex-colleagues from the Garda, he is being severely beaten by men who despise tinkers or he's being hounded by nuisance suspects. Somehow amongst all of this drama, drug-taking and intrigue, Jack also manages a couple of relationships and accompanying break-ups. Yes, there's certainly a lot going on and emotions are being whipped from high to low.

This is a bleak story filled with noir themes. A sense of hopelessness surrounds Jack who is either unwilling or unable to save himself even while he's trying to help others. The mood isn't improved by the repeated warnings given to us in Jack's narrative that mistakes and oversights he is making will later result in tragedy. Armed with this fact from quite early I was on my guard to trust nothing and nobody, but Bruen was still able to produce an ending that moved me.

There is magic in Ken Bruen that is not easily placed. It's certainly not the plot - there is little mystery and less forensics in Bruen's Irish crime staccato. And one can hardly be drawn to the characters, unless in the mildly perverse sense of attraction to tragic heroes plotting self destruction. Nor is Bruen good for your spirits, as he drags the reader through vast fields of human wreckage that begin with mere despair and reach utter wretchedness by the climax. Yet just as Bruen's drug and alcohol addled Jack Taylor is drawn to his booze and coke, I find myself addicted to this sparse and brutal poetry disguised as fiction, not merely unique but untouchable.

"The Killing of the Tinkers" is the second Jack Taylor novel. A classically simple Bruen story line: someone is killing "tinkers" (gypsies), the cops could care less, ex-Guard Taylor is offered a lucrative fee by one of the clan to find out who. But as with most of Bruen's writing, this central plot - finding the killer - is mostly forgotten as the insolent Taylor drifts in and out of all varieties of drug induced stupors and subsequent vomit and hangovers - not a lot of social redeeming value here, and far from the cardboard cutout PIs more often found in crime fiction. Taylor stays sober enough to wreck his short marriage and start a torrid new affair. While some of the tangents and side stories may seem like diversion in a patently sparse Bruen novel, this is indeed key to the Bruen's allure of spinning the complex psychological and cultural backdrop to the story. As always, the well-read author peppers his prose with a wide range of literary quotes and references - how can you argue with a guy comfortable with Dylan Thomas and Bob Dylan - adding a dimension that complements the story while contradicting Taylor's surface brutishness. The birth of Taylor's friends child builds from the poignant in "Tinkers" to the heart wrenching in subsequent Taylor novels ("The Dramatist", "Priest"). From confrontation to beatings to decapitated swans and irate mothers, Taylor and Bruen careen to a finish that if not Hitchcockian is certainly surprising, highlighting some clever foreshadowing not typically associated with this author.

In short, modern noir as bleak as it can get, an addiction too intelligent to be called guilty pleasure. If you're not a Ken Bruen fan yet, pick up "The Guards" first and start your own habit.