The Ghosts of Galway

Ken Bruen is a singular voice in crime fiction "with his ear for lilting Irish prose and his taste for the kind of gallows humor heard only at the foot of the gallows" ( New York Times Book Review ). In The Ghosts of Galway , he brings those elegiac talents to bear on a case involving a famously blasphemous red book and Bruen's equally profane antihero Jack Taylor. As well-versed in politics, pop culture, and crime fiction as he is ill-fated in life, Jack Taylor is recovering from a mistaken medical diagnosis and a failed suicide attempt. In need of money, and with former cop on his resume, Jack has been hired as a night-shift security guard. But his Ukrainian boss has Jack in mind for a bit of off-the-books work. He wants Jack to find what some claim to be the first true book of heresy, The Red Book , currently in the possession of a rogue priest who is hiding out in Galway after fleeing a position at the Vatican. Despite Jack's distaste for priests of any stripe, the money is too good to turn down. Em, the many-faced woman who has had a vise on Jack's heart and mind for the past two years, reappears and turns out to be entangled with the story of The Red Book , too, leading Jack down ever more mysterious and lethal pathways. It seems all sides are angling for a piece of Jack Taylor, but as The Ghosts of Galway twists toward a violent end, he is increasingly plagued by ghosts--by the disposable and disposed of in a city filled with as much darkness as the deepest corners of Jack's own mind.