Reviewed By: Catherine Thompson - RAM
![[5 stars]](../images/spots/6_paw_50.gif)
The Magdalen Martyrs
Amazon US PB Amazon US TPB Amazon US HC Amazon UK PB Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada TPB Amazon Canada HC
Ken Bruen
Class/Genre: Mystery
Series: Jack Taylor # 3
St. Martin’s Minotaur; $22.95 hardcover; 274 pages
It’s December in Galway, and Jack Taylor is sober for the first time in months, gearing up, as he says, for the Christmas season. Once he’s drunk his way through the holidays and half of January, he gets a call from Bill Cassell, the “hard man” who helped him out in his last case. Bill’s got an easy problem for Jack to solve: find Rita Monroe, a woman who’s either dead or very old. She was, he claims, the person who helped his mother escape the Magdalen laundry, a Church-run “sanctuary” for unwed mothers in the 1950s.
At the same time, Terence Boyle hires Jack to investigate his stepmother, whom he claims murdered his father. Jack makes little progress on either case until Bill’s boys show up and play a little Russian roulette a wee bit too close to the back of his head. With that as an incentive, and his own curiosity burning a hole in his soul, Jack delves into the history of the Magdalen.
The Magdalen Martyrs is the third in Bruen’s Jack Taylor series, following the Shamus Award-winning The Guards and last year’s The Killing of the Tinkers. I don’t recommend Bruen to everyone; he’s definitely an acquired taste. Jack isn’t a pleasant fellow to be around. But for those of us who appreciate Bruen’s stark style, The Magdalen Martyrs goes down like Irish whisky. It’s brutish, nasty, and short, yet at the same time, there is an elegance to Bruen’s language, not to mention an eloquence. The pacing is ferocious; I nearly read it all in one day. It’s an absolutely stunning novel.
Catherine Thompson - RAM
Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Catherine Thompson - RAM
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