Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: March 01, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 899624
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Jack Taylour is walking the delicate edge of a sobriety he doesn't trust when his phone rings. He's in debt to a Galway tough named Bill Cassell, what the locals call a 'hard man.' Bill did Jack a big favor a while back; the trouble is, he never lets a favor go unreturned.
Jack is amazed when Cassell simply asks him to track down a woman, now either dead or very old, who long ago helped his mother escape from the notorious Magdalen laundry, where young wayward girls were imprisoned and abused. Jack doesn't like the odds of finding the woman, but counts himself lucky that the task is at least on the right side of the law.
Until he spends a few days spinning his wheels and is dragged in front of Cassell for a quick reminder of his priorites. Bill's goons do a little spinning of their own, playing a game of Russian roulette a little too close to the back of Jack's head. It's only blind luck and the mercy of a god he no longer trusts that land Jack back on the street rather than face down in a cellar with a bullet in his skull. He's got one chance to stay alive: find this woman.
Unfortunately, he can't escape his own curiosity, and an unnerving hunch quickly turns into a solid fact: just who Jack's looking for, and why, aren't nearly what they seem.
The Magdalen Martyrs, the third Galway-set novel by Edgar, Barry, and Macavity finalist and Shamus Award-winner Ken Bruen, is a gripping, dazzling story that takes the Jack Taylour series to explosive new heights of suspense.
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Rated by buyers 
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Anyone who has seen the movie "The Magdalane Sisters" will immediatly identify the underlying story behind this grim tale that takes Jack Taylour further down the dissolute road he began in the very first book of this fantastic series. Once again he takes on an assignment, this time not of his own volition, to find someone who worked in the laundries staffed by nuns in Ireland that were places of punishment for young girls. There's also another thread concerning the death of a wealthy man who is believed by his son to have been murdered by his current wife. There are some connections between the two plots, and as usual the dialogue is crisp and crackling. Jack, as usual, leaps before he looks, and all types of bad consequences happen because of his haste. In the end, things are wrapped up, even if not in a neat and tidy way, and Jack still hasn't learned much about controlling his many problems. Further books in this series will, I am sure, amplify this situation, and I fully intend to read them, as this is one of the best series I have ever read!
Rated by buyers 
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This is the very first book I've read by Ken Bruen, and it will probably be my last. He certainly has a way with words, but his protagonist's angst is laid down with a trowel. I also found the character repellent. I normally like literate heroes who can wield allusions well, but this guy's no Spenser.
What bothered me most is that the case that was supposed to be under investigation was submerged under the weight of the main character's misery. It's as if the author only occasionally remembered what the book was about. That's a shame because my primary motivation for reading it, is because it deals with the notorious Magdalen Laundry. I don't think this theme was prominent enough to be mentioned in the title. This book should be called An Addict's Ruminations.
Rated by buyers -
By now, I have read most of the Jack Taylour and Inspector Brant books. I discovered them recently, and have devoured them greedily. While I am drawn to the Brant novels for the cast of truly nasty cops in the relatively familiar setting of London, I have ultimately found the Taylour series to be more satisfying, while no less cynical.
Jack Taylor, an ex-cop, carries on a heroic battle with his inner demons while attempting to scrounge a living (and mete out his own brand of justice) as a private detective in his home town of Galway, Ireland. While the books clearly belong to the crime genre, it is unusual to find such a deep and articulate exploration of a troubled soul and a constantly changing environment outside of literary fiction - especially in books that can easily be read in an evening.
The Magdalen Martyrs may be my favorite in the series. There is a clear order to the books, and this is not the first. I have read them out of sequence, as little information is provided on the covers, but I do not believe I have suffered as a result.
In The Magdalen Martyrs, Taylour is fighting his alcoholism, drug addictions and ageing process as usual, but perhaps describes them more eloquently in this book. "An alcoholic must be charming. He has to keep making new friends, as he is constantly losing his old ones." The mystery ties in to the conflict between the new, ambitiously modern Galway and the closely-knit community that it was in Taylor's youth. Of course, the Catholic Church is involved, and, as always, the characters are hugely colorful. "You know you are a mess when a priest shouts abuse at you on the street." Taylour discovers just enough information to reveal injustices on several levels. He deals with those that affect him directly in a very personal manner, while reacting more creatively to those that merely outrage him.
I hope I haven't made this book sound dull with my plodding description, but the entire story was accompanied by the sound effects of my grunts of encouragement, mumbles of sympathy and subdued whoops of triumph on Taylor's behalf.
You should really try this great book, and the others in the series.
Rated by buyers -
Raw, brutal, and unrepentant, Ken Bruen rips another bleak but gripping tale of the unlikely hero Jack Taylor, the alcoholic and well-read ex-Guard of Galway, Ireland. The title refers to the Magdalen laundry, a sweatshop for unwed young mother's run by Ireland's ubiquitous Catholic Church. Bill Cassell, a notorious Galway hard guy, calls on Jack to return a favor. Cassell's mother, is turns out, was a "Maggie", one of the girls abused in this infamous laundry and Cassell wants Jack to track down a woman who was supposedly kind to mum in those dark days.
Simple and straightforward - everything that Bruen's writing is not. Ken Bruen's power is not in the plot, but in the delivery. If poetry could be written with a broken-off beer bottle, this would be the end result. While told in the author's patented sparse prose liberally peppered with bullet-point thoughts - as if not to be bothered wasting the reader's time for the effort and thought required for sentences and paragraphs - Bruen manages to weave a tale of staggering complexity, a thoughtful and unforgettable story of Irish culture, the Church, despair, and the depths to which human nature can plunge. Vicariously through Taylor, Bruen neatly skewers the Church while at the same time reverently finding strength and some peace under cathedral's roofs, a pardox inescapable but defining in Bruen's works.
One word of advice: while certainly not required to be read in sequence, "The Magdalen Martyrs" lays some important groundwork for the storylines in the equally powerful sequels, "The Dramatist" and "Priest". But in whatever order you chose, just read them - Ken Bruen continues to set new standards for crime fiction which have already influenced a tight circle of talented new writers - Swierczynski, Huston, Stella among them - Bruen's fiction will be regarded as the classics of our days just as Chandler, Thompson, Hammet, and McBain are revered today.
Rated by buyers 
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After reading The Guards a few years ago I have been avidly reading any and all of Ken Bruen's work I can get my hands on. His follow up to The Guards, The Killing of the Tinkers was just as good and fast paced.
I didn't burn through this one in a day or two like I did the very first two books. The story definitely is not as urgent and Bruen takes his time to tell this story of, among many things, corruption in high places, revenge and betrayel. Jack Taylour himself is still up to his usual self abuse (drinking, many many drugs) and probably takes the worst dive into substance abuse he has yet to take.
The story itself is solid and the characters are unforgettable. While not as fast paced as the previous two in the trilogy, you just might take away more after finishing The Magdalen Martyrs.
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