The Killing of the Tinkers

This is the second Jack Taylor mystery, and follows on fairly closely from the first book, The Guards. This time, Jack returns to Galway from London, bringing with him a cocaine habit. Yes, because all the drunkenness of the first book wasn't enough, this time he needed to be coked to the gills as well. The book was a brutal, violent, and drunken crime novel, and a remarkably good read. (If you like brutal, violent, drunken crime.)

Despite the drunkenness of our main character/narrator, I warmed to this book, and even more unusually, to our drunken/coked up narrator. Usually an annoyance (I'm not fond of drunks), and I just want to slap drunk characters and get them to sober up because you can see that it's all going horribly wrong show more around them and if they were *sober* maybe it wouldn't be...

Things do go horribly wrong, Jack's constantly drunk/high, and if he was sober it probably wouldn't have gone as wrong as it did. But somehow I liked being with him. Probably all the books he reads, his bookishness counteracted the drunkenness for me. I wouldn't like spending face-to-face time with Jack Taylor, but I did come away with a long list of other books to read, and a desire to continue with the series. show less

[Killing of the Tinkers] and [The Magdalen Martyrs] were books two and three in the Jack Taylor series by Ken Bruen. These books are gritty and dark. Jack Taylor is an ex Guarda (the Irish police) who now works as a private detective. He is carrying around a lot of excess baggage - a difficult mother that he hates, a serious addiction to alcohol and now cocaine, self-destructive tendencies, and anger management issues. He is a walking time bomb that can explode at any minute, injuring himself and anyone near him, friends and enemies alike. And yet there is something about Jack that is admirable; his heart is in the right place even if he seems to have very little control over it. He is haunted and wounded and broken, and yet he stands show more ready to fight. In fact, he insists on it! What intrigues me, I think, is that his character is so complicated - he has a deep love and appreciation for literature, he is clever and yet refuses to take the time to make good decisions. He learns from his mistakes and yet refuses to apply what he has learned. His biggest asset is that he somehow manages to just keep going. His biggest weakness is that he rushes head first into almost every situation. The mystery in these books is not the focus, rather it is imbedded into a story full of crisp, snappy dialogue, flawed characters, and wonderful quotes and reminiscences from various literature sources. Certainly not for everybody, but for me a captivating experience - I will read on even though I know Jack will just screw up everything all over again.

"Try smoking at Dublin Airport or at any airport. Good luck. Talk about segregation. Small pockets of isolation where the shamed smokers congregate. Like lepers of the modern wasteland. You'd nod guiltily at each other, crank the lighter and suck the poison in. You'd need your head examined to bring drugs through Dublin Airpot. These guys are lethal. Boy, do they see you coming. Get you and you are going down. I chanced it."

"My mother is a walking b*tch, then and now. I hadn't heard light nor hair of her in over a year. Maybe she was dead. She adored my one outstanding credential: my failure. With such a son, she could be seen to endure. The woman was born to martyrdom, but only with an audience. Pay per view: My expulsion from the guards, my drinking, my non-starter life: she couldn't have wished for more." show less

"Killing of the Tinkers" starts with the return of Jack Taylor from London. If you've read The Guards (the first novel in the series), then you're aware that at the end of that book, Taylor had sworn off drinking and had gone to London for a change. Well, now he's back, and has fallen off the wagon. He is commissioned by the head of the clans (the tinkers), a guy named Sweeper, to find out who is killing off other tinkers, then mutilating the bodies.

As in the case of The Guards, the mystery is not the central focus here ... it is definitely the hard-drinking, now coke-snorting Jack. He is a very paradoxical individual; self-destructive yet erudite and extremely literate, even as he's knocking back shot after shot of Jameson to chase show more down his Guiness. Basically, he's a human train wreck waiting to happen, and I think Bruen's a master at getting into Taylor's soul and psyche. His characterizations of the other people that surround Jack are also realistic. In Taylor's novels there seem to be no tidy endings, so if that's what you want, then don't read this series. I'm fascinated with and can't get enough of the character of Jack Taylor, or of Bruen's writing. There were a couple of spots in this book that were laugh out loud funny, which seems incongruous given the dark and gloomy atmosphere of Jack Taylor's life.

I would definitely recommend this one to anyone looking for something good in the way of Irish crime fiction, and to anyone who started with Bruen's The Guards and is wondering whether or not to continue the series.

Highly recommended. show less

Ken Bruen is an author of few words. His Jack Taylor books are short, succinct and directly to the point, and let me tell you, a lot happens in between the covers of his books. Jack Taylor is my new favourite anti-hero. He's a hard drinking, hard-scrabble and surprisingly literary PI who lives in Galway, Ireland. This is the second book in the series and Jack is coming back to Galway after a year in London. He left because his life was in a real mess and he had many people after his blood. He comes back to Galway still a raging alcoholic but he's also a cocaine addict. His life is a mess and he can't seem to get out of his downward spiral. As he sits in one of his favourite watering holes shortly after returning, a big gypsy walks into show more the bar and asks Jack for his help. Someone is killing young gypsy men in his clan. Jack comes out of his alcoholic haze and recognizes a man who seems just like himself and he agrees to help. The pace of this book will blow you away and even though it's short we get more than enough characterization and plot to keep a reader wildly turning pages. Jack is a train wreck and he'd be the first to admit it, but he is the most insightful, quick-witted PI you're ever likely to meet. It makes me wonder how spectacular he'd be if he was sober. show less

“The Killing of the Tinkers” is a lonely book.

I used to read a fair amount of crime fiction. A lot, actually. In the last years I've found myself reading less of it, and in the last years I find that the novels I give up on the soonest are crime novels. Why? Well. For several reasons. For starters the term "noir" is being used today as something of a buzzword. It’s used with the same promiscuity as the snack food industry uses ketchup. I’ve lost count on the number of books I’ve given up on because of that. I don’t want to read an author that just likes to play a noir game. I want an author that really pays attention to reality and logic. Ken Bruen is one of the happy few that despite a few show more wobbles, and missteps, has been able to avoid tumbling into oblivion (I’m still reading the early Bruen. I’m still withholding judgment on the late Bruen).

After having a taste of Jack Taylor in "The Guards", I was ready for some more. Ken Bruen has a noir writing style that perfectly captures the flavour of the local underground in which the characters live, including the drugs that often exist but are rarely written about in mainstream fiction. Ken Bruen is stylistically in a class of his own. Right from the first page, Bruen hits a faultless noir mood and doesn’t let go until the very last page. The book is full of despair and it takes a special author to be able to find something beautiful and honest in such unrelenting despair, and Bruen is the guy to do it.

If Jack Taylor is your run-of-the-mill detective, what isn’t definitely standard, is Bruen's prose. Not only are you hammered on the head with the Queen’s English, but Bruen has a unique writing style in which he sometimes uses poetry that fits the prose pitch-perfect, even in the middle of a paragraph, or when using a list. Raw poetical prose at its finest.

“The Killing of the Tinkers” isn’t overly concerned with detailing the detection process, and the mysteries are actually easily solved, but that's beside the point. Noir is all-pervasive throughout the book. And maybe that’s why Jack Taylor drinks so much, maybe to stop himself from seeing, not only the worst parts of the world around him, but also himself.

As I said in another review, Bruen is an acquired taste.
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Jack Taylor might be a train-wreck, but somehow remains appealing - evident even after a thrashing. As expected in a story involving an alcoholic - and now he's on cocaine too - it can be irreverent, brutal, revolting. But this is Jack Taylor and we can forgive him. The character-driven series is enhanced by Bruen's spare style of writing giving it a poetic quality. It would be a good idea to keep pencil and paper handy to make notes about Taylor's reading and music choices. I enjoyed this a lot and look forward to following the series.

Tinkers, also known as travellers, are a traditionally nomadic people. In Galway Ireland, someone is targeting and brutally murdering these "celtic gypsies". Enter Jack Taylor, freshly returned from an extended visit in London, bringing back a "leather coat and a coke habit". He is hired by a tinker to investigate these vicious killings, since the police despise the "clans" and refuse to get involved. This is crime fiction at it's finest. Jack Taylor, wrestling with drug addiction and alcoholism, is a wonderfully drawn character, who also has a deep passion for books. This is the second book in the series and here is a brief passage:
"In London, I tended to hang with the fallen. My aura of eroding decay was a beacon to those travellers show more of the road less survived. The drunks, dopers, cons, losers, dead angels. Come to me, all ye who are lost, and I'll give you identification." show less