In this first book in the Jack Taylor series by Ken Bruen we are introduced to the main character of Jack Taylor. He is a private investigator who tries to solve crimes and help out those around him, but really he is in need of most help himself. As he says himself “I hit lucky and found resolutions. A minor reputation began to build on a false premise. Most important of all, I was cheap”. Later we are told that an instructor in the police training school described Jack thus: “we can safely assume Taylor has a bright future behind him”.

The story deals with Jack taking on a case and trying to help Ann Henderson, whose daughter supposedly committed suicide but who Ann thinks was murdered. We discover that several other girls also have committed suicide in similar circumstances and then discover that all is not as it seems, and that the reason for their deaths is a lot more frightening and sinister than we thought.

The writing style of the novel (and indeed all of the Jack Taylor books) is sparse, pared down to the basics of what needs to be said and understood. However what is said is exquisite and gives more detail than any long passages could give us.

Jack is a tragic character. He is haunted by the ghosts of his past (transgressions done, being sacked from the police, etc), his family (his acute feeling of loss at the death of his father, and his feelings of disappointment at his mother), the people he cares about, and how he lets them all down and hurts them due to his self-destruction, alcoholism and depression. He is a man who is very uncomfortable in his own skin and in the new Ireland where he lives. The solid foundation stones of his past are gone, and he stumbles fearfully and angrily over their temporary and ever-changing replacements. The only constant in his life is his books and love of reading. We see his failures in his dealings with his family, with women, with friends and neighbours and in his distrust of all authority, whether church or state.

Jack is a man of extreme contradictions. He can be brutal and yet very tender. He can love and hate. He has a very high sense of morality and social justice and yet can act in ways which are inhumane and revengeful and makes one fearful of his motives.
As well as Jack we are introduced to a host of characters which are all incredibly well drawn by the author. From the winos in the park to the main characters, all are so incredibly real that one cannot but feel a bond with them and a personal interest in their story and their situation.

For anyone wanting to read the Jack Taylor books it is essential to read them in the correct order as the characters do develop in the series and what happens in one book often has a huge effect on the following books. And as the first book in the series The Guards is an incredible opening and introduction to the series. It is both dark and funny, will make you laugh and cry, and will show you without flinching both the good and bad side of human nature. ( )

Do you want to read a mystery that is fun, one you can blow through in a couple of hours? Ken Bruen’s THE GUARDS is the one for you. His dialogue is killer. Funny, aggressive, witty. Jack Taylor is a former guard in Ireland, guard being what we in the USA would call a policeman. He solves crimes in a bumbling, almost accidental way.

The other characters are often quirky, including his first landlady, a young woman, then an old landlady later in the story. Plus, there’s the required, for a mystery, bartender, another former guard, and Taylor’s client, the mother of a young girl who was murdered, but listed as a suicide.

I love it that Taylor is a reader who often mentions books and quotes from them.

I’d rate this novel five stars except it gives no sense of place. Ireland is a country an author could really “show” the reader, could really make the story seem real to the reader with a sense of place. For most of my life I’d been indifferent to description, preferring to just get on with reading the story. But after years of having the idea that description, a sense of place, makes a story seem real pounded into my head by James Sallis,* I’ve come to appreciate it, though it’s still not the most important part of a story to me. I also came to understand that novels that I’ve read over the years that are mostly dialogue seemed “lightweight” to me, though I didn‘t realize it at the time. Bruen has written a story that is, in literary terms, “talking heads,” people floating on the page, somehow not solidly of this world.

That said, THE GUARDS makes me want to read the next novel, THE KILLING OF THE TINKERS in the Jack Taylor series.

*James Sallis is a writer who has had numerous novels published for over forty years. He is the author of the “Lew Griffin” mystery novels among others. He teaches novel writing in Phoenix, Arizona. I’ve been told by another Lter that Bruen mentions Sallis and some of his novels in THE KILLING OF THE TINKERS.

Update: "The Killing of the Tinkers" does mention Sallis and some of his novels. This second of the "Jack Taylor" series seemed better than the first, and a bit better grounded in the real world. ( )

I am ready to go back for more of Jack Taylor. What I found very interesting was the way the book was printed. ( )

According to this author there are no private eyes in Ireland ,so what Jack Taylor, a hard-drinking ex-cop, does is look for things. In this case he is hired by a distraught woman , to look into the "questionable" suicide of her daughter and of course this leads him into some down-right nasty places. You might be thinking, another drunken, tortured antihero? Tired and cliched, right? Well wrong, because this fine crime novelist has managed to put a fresh face on this well-traveled genre. His prose is fast, lean and lyrical at times and who couldn't love a broken hero who has a passion for books that equals ours! This is only book one and I'll be back for the rest, you can bet on it! ( )

I read 27 books in 2008; this was the best one I read. The mystery is not the primary focus of the book. The book tells us the story of the hero, Jack Taylor, who just happens to be hired to prove a woman's daughter did not commit suicide. It is the telling of his story that is in fact the purpose of the book. He is not a particularly fascinating person nor has his life been a fascinating life, yet the author's ability to tell Jack's story is fascinating. Many of the other characters in the book, including his mother, his best friend (who dies), his new wannabe best friend and his new girlfriend, all are painful attachments that remind him of the isolation and hoplessness he feels. But as in so many great tragedies, he knows, and we learn, that the person who is most responsible for the pain and isolation he feels is himself. This is not a feel good book where the solving of the mystery reassures the reader that all is well in the world. But it is a great book, one where you can feel the blood coursing through the veins of Jack Taylor.

Other mystery series started off well with great hero's or at least one's that could be felt and recoginized a being truly human, even if they were fictional characters. Only to then become caricatures of themselves in later books as the need to continue telling some kind of story trapped the author into repeating the same story over and over. Other author's were not able to solve the mystery of how to have a such a flawed hero and have the story continue to resonanat each time. James Lee Burke and Ian Rankin were not able to do so. The story remains the same for the most part, lots of really bad guys; one good guy; good guy wins in spite of his flaws. But at least in the beginning, Ken Bruen has written a great book about his hero. One that will resonant over time. ( )