Ireland’s master of poetic crime fiction, called “an Irish treasure” by Shelf Awareness, spins a new alcohol-fueled Jack Taylor plot, featuring a Rhodes scholar gone astray, and professor with a violent streak, and a young woman who almost makes Jack look tame

The award-winning crime writer Ken Bruen is a as joyously unapologetic in his writing as he is wickedly poetic. In the new Jack Taylor novel Green Hell, Bruen’s dark angle of a protagonist has hit rock bottom: one of his best friends is dead, the other has stopped speaking to him; he has given up battling his addiction to alcohol and pills; and his firing from the Irish national police, the Garda, is ancient history. But Jack isn't about to embark on a self-improvement plan. Instead, he has taken up a vigilante case against a respected professor of literature at the University of Galway who has a violent habit his friends in high places are only too happy to ignore. And when Jack rescues preppy American student on a Rhodes Scholarship for a couple of kid thugs, he also unexpectedly gains a new sidekick, who abandons his thesis on Beckett to write a biography of Galway’s most magnetic rogue.
Between pub crawls and violent outbursts, Jack’s vengeful plot against the professor soon spirals toward chaos. Enter Emerald, an edgy young Goth who could either be the answer to Jack’s problems, or the last ripped stitch in his undoing. Ireland may be known as a “green Eden,” but in Jack Taylor’s world, the national color has a decidedly lethal sheen.

“The series that defines Irish noir.” –BookPage, on Purgatory

“The things Jack witnesses these days. . . would cause a saint to go blind. And Jack, whose heroism is fueled by ‘plain old-fashioned rage, bile, and bitterness,’ is no saint. Never was, never will be. Amen.” -New York Times Book Review, on

Purgatory
KEN BRUEN received a doctorate in metaphysics; taught English in Africa; and then became a crime novelist. The author of then previous Jack Taylor novels and the critically acclaimed White Trilogy, he is the recipient of two Barry Awards and two Shamus Awards, and has twice been a finalist for the Edgar Award. He lives in Galway, Ireland.

Jack Taylor has finally found a modicum of peace. He has managed to kick, however tenuously, the substances that had a stranglehold over his life. Yet this fragile existence is threatened when a vigilante killer begins targeting citizens, signing mysterious notes with the moniker ?C33” and addressing them to Jack. As Jack tries to unravel the mystery of this demented murderer, he is brought into the fold of an enigmatic tech billionaire who has been buying up massive amounts of property in Galway, seemingly in the hopes of offering this downtrodden city a better future. But if Jack has learned one thing, it’s that people who outwardly claim to be on the side of righteousness are likely harboring more nefarious motives. With the help of a former-drug-dealer-turned-zen-master and a dogged police sergeant, Jack is determined to track down ?C33,” even if it jeopardizes his friends, his sobriety, and the last remaining shreds of his sanity.