Jack Taylor, the alcoholic and literary Irish blackness of Ken Bruen

Photo of actor Iain Glen and writer Ken Bruen: (c) Martin Macguire

Let's say 8 or 9 days. This is how long it took me to read the only three translated and published titles of this series by the Irish writer Ken bruen about his detective and antihero Jack Taylor. The hook, like Taylor to alcohol, tobacco, coca and whatever is put ahead, has been fulminating.

Fortunately, his lack of more literary "privacy" is compensated by the excellent television adaptation who stars lain glen, that Scottish actor who was born elegant and exudes style whatever he does and whatever he looks like. So I end the month dedicating this article to you.

Ken bruen

Bruen was born in Galway en 1951, and that city is one of his characters in his novels. He exercised as Professor of English in various places around the world like Africa, Japan, Southeast Asia or South America before beginning to publish books in the early 90's. He has written more than veinte novels among which this series of Jack Taylor Or the R&B call, starring the cops Roberts and Brant, Among others.

His works stand out for being short novels (just 250 pages), of Also short chapters and phrases even shorter, incisive and loaded with irony. In the case of the Jack Taylor series, that irony is much more acid when it is narrated in first person by the protagonist. Their constants music references and literary quotes. And certainly for a corrosive humor and harsh language in some brilliant dialogues and that abound almost more than the narrative.

▷ Test free Kindle Unlimited: millions of books

Jack Taylor

It's almost impossible to get kicked out of the Garda Síochána (Irish National Police). You have to really make an effort to do it. Unless you become a public disgrace, almost everything else is spoiled for you. I had reached the limit. A multitude of

Notices

Banns

Last opportunities

Pardons.

And still he couldn't get any better. Or rather, he couldn't stop drinking. Don't get me wrong. Irish cops and drinking have an old, almost loving relationship. An abstemious policeman is the object of suspicion, even if not of total and absolute derision, inside and outside the body.

It begins so Lumber, the first title in the series. That is his style and structure that does not change in the other two, The massacre of the gypsies y The dramatist. And so Jack Taylor introduces himself, the prototype of the alcoholic detective, tough, foolish, desperate and fatalistic, that neither seeks nor wants compassion, understanding or sympathy.

It is always pulling irony as bitter as it is effective but also always being aware of it and its emotional precariousness. And always with some good beatings that he takes and that is not spared in any novel.

▷ Test 3 months free Audible: thousands of audiobooks

Taylor around 50, he adored his father, who was the one who got him into reading, the only positive addiction that is recognized.

He got me started with Dickens. Little by little he introduced me to the classics as one who does not want the thing. Always discreet, making me believe that the choice was mine. Later, when the tornadoes of adolescence turned everything upside down, he introduced me to the crime novel. It made me keep reading. He also put aside a series of books and then gave me a package with philosophy poetry and the hook: American crime novels. By then I had become a bibliophile in the true sense of the word. Not only did I love reading, I also liked books as such. He had learned to appreciate the smell, the binding, the printing, the physical touch of volumes.

(De Lumber).

However he hates his mother as much as she hates him and they maintain a more than cold relationship where one of those secondary characters that cannot be absent in a novel set in Ireland plays an important role: the father Malachy, that typical confidant priest of his mother who always goes around recriminating Jack's attitude and life.

Friends are conspicuous by their absence In that chaotic Taylor existence, save for Jack's regular pub owner (and the only one they let him in), a kind of second parent or guardian. And then another owner of another pub, Jeff, with whom he does have a relationship that could be considered friendship.

I felt old. When I was close to fifty, every bad year I had lived had been etched on my face. The hangover was on me for another five hard years. Jeff asked:

-Coffee?

"Does the Pope say the rosary?"

-That means yes?

(De The massacre of the gypsies).

In the middle, Ann henderson, the woman who in Lumber hires Taylor's services to investigate the death, allegedly by suicide, of her teenage daughter. Henderson will be the impossible love of his life, which will continue to appear in subsequent novels.

As the scene of the action the city of Galway that, together with the permanent literary references (each chapter ends or begins with a quotation) and musical references both in the description and in the plot, make up a ideal atmosphere for a series of cases each more intriguing.

However, it is the slight tilt of the balance towards the more human essence of the characters more than the importance of those plots what stands out from this series. And like I said, a pity that they have not continued publishing the rest of the novels that compose it.

"Jack, we thought you stopped reading," [Jeff] said.

-Never.

(De The dramatist).

Series Titles

Lumber (The Guards, 2001)
The massacre of the gypsies (The Killing of the Tinkers, 2002): After spending a year in London, Jack returns to Galway, with a new addiction to cocaine. As soon as he returns, he finds a new case. Someone is murdering young nomads whose bodies are dumped in the center of the city. The head of a gypsy clan entrusts him with the investigation. And Jack Taylor, despite his addictions, maintains his ability to know where to look and what questions to ask. With the help of an English policeman he will try to solve the case.
The Magdalen Martyrs (2003)
The dramatist (TheDramatist, 2004): Jack appears clean, goes out with a mature woman and even admits that he has gone to mass again. But then the deaths of two students whose bodies are found with a copy of a book by the writer John Millington Synge cease to seem accidental. Jack begins to believe that there is a murderer named The Playwright who will continue to act. But it will be other more personal circumstances that put him on the edge of the abyss in an ending that strikes mercilessly.
priest (2006)
Cross (2007)
Sanctuary (2008)
The Devil (2010)
headstone (2011)
Purgatory (2013)
Green Hell (2015)
The Emerald Lie (2016)
TI have Ghosts of Galway (2017)

Jack Taylor on television

The television series (can be seen in Netflix) consists of 9 chapters of an hour and a half duration. It is based on the books and divides plots that for example are two in a novel. Also add characters that are not or remove others, but basically it reflects the novels with fidelity to its essence. And above all, the interpretation of lain glen.

Wasting style, class and presence that characterize him even though he appears in a wreckage, this Scottish actor, now so well known for Game of Thrones, a first class job giving Taylor his more smashed physique and gloomier character. It goes without saying that it is highly recommended, whether you know English or not, see it in the original version.

A shame that, as often happens in film or television adaptations, there is a time when the scriptwriters start to fuck her with cigarette paper and want to "soften" the hardness of the novels or that character of its protagonists. Taylor is the worst in books and that eagerness to redeem him or extol his few virtues ends up distorting the character or, at least, not convincing readers who have read all the novels.

However, the great setting in Galway, the plots and the performances The cast led by the magnificent Iain Glen make the series worthwhile for any good fan of the genre.

Other novels by Bruen

London boulevard.
R & B series: The big arrest y The alien.

ActualidadLiteratura