JACK TAYLOR by Ken Bruen
Born in 1951 in Galway, Ireland, the city in which he still makes his home, Ken Bruen had his first book published in 1992 and has been extremely prolific since then, producing seven novels in the Jack Taylor series, set in Galway; seven novels about Inspector Brant, set in England; ten stand-alone novels; and five short story collections, as well as uncollected stories. He was the editor of Dublin Noir (2006).
His lean, spare prose places him among the most original stylists in the history of crime fiction. His dark, hopelessly tragic, and violent tales have surprising bursts of absurd humor-moments that more accurately reflect the personality of the author.
Much loved by the mystery community, Bruen has been collecting honors and awards, including a Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America for The Guards, which also received Edgar Allan Poe and Macavity award nominations for best novel of the year; and a Macavity for The Killing of the Tinkers, which was also nominated for an Anthony Award as best novel of the year.
I’m always asked in interviews where this odd, grizzled, grumpy PI Taylor came from.
He is the world’s worst detective. Cases get solved not because of him but despite him.
He’s
Alcoholic
Addict
Rude
Obnoxious
And in very bad shape
And yet… Forster’s famous words.
He gets the job done… somehow, and he so desperately wants to connect, even though he’d never admit it.
Only connect.
Jack does… usually when he least expects to.
His love of books has saved his sanity on so many occasions.
I said on a TV show recently, Jack hasn’t drunk for nigh on three books, and they laughed.
Uproariously.
They would.
Three books…
And not a drink.
For them a joke. For Jack, total hell.
And the reviews say Jack is mellowing.
Like fuck.
They ain’t seen Cross yet.
Or Benediction.
He’s only warming up.
He will bow out on the final book… titled… Amen.
And no one can utter those words with quite such conviction as Jack.
When the end comes, and come it will, no one will be happier than Jack.
Yet…
The Guards… his first outing, he was drinking but still a little in control, and then…
His best friend turns out to be the real psycho and Jack literally drowns him, off Nimmo’s Pier in the Claddagh.
In Galway, an almost mystical place for Irish people… Jack throws a bottle of really good booze in after his friend.
And heads for London.
New start.
The UK loves Micks so much.
Need I add it wasn’t a success?
The sequel,
The Killing of the Tinkers.
They told me I couldn’t write this.
My favorite caution.
This will kill your career.
My career has been killed so often, and I’m always told… Oh, my god, you
can’t
write
this
… and some damn stubborn place in my bedraggled psyche, thought
Can’t?
Then
Have to.
The Hackman Blues, the second crime novel I wrote (fourth published), I was dropped by my agent, my publisher,
because of it.
Said,
You let this be published, you’re gone.
I did.
They were right.
I was gone.
As Derek Raymond said,
“I had the down escalator all to meself.”
I continued to write, to teach, and to travel. Brief sojourn to learn Portuguese in a Brazilian jail, which helped the dark vision forming in me head.
I take fierce grief in Ireland from the literati, as I always say my influences are American.
The hard-boiled
masters and they were and remain thus.
I wrote a series of novels about UK cops, out of more damn cheek than anything else… a Mick writing about UK cops.
Did a stand-alone based on Sunset Boulevard and it sold well, but still I hadn’t hit what it was that was fermenting in me mind, uncoiling like a snake. Did a doctorate in metaphysics and still… the vision hadn’t clarified. I returned to Ireland in 2000 to find a new country.
We’d got rich.
The fook did that happen?
We went from Mass to Microsoft with no preparation, and suddenly, people were immigrating to Ireland!
What?
The village I grew up in had become a cool, trendy European city.
And bingo.
It all came together.
They said there were no Irish crime novels, as we’d no mean streets… With the new prosperity, we’d also got… crack cocaine and all its outriders.
I had me Irish novel; it all jelled.
I grew up fascinated by the Guards… solid, beefy guys who took no shite from anyone, and I’d got a library ticket when I was ten years old, books being forbidden in our house.
My older beloved brother had died of alcoholism.
Write about the Guards.
Back in 2000, like the clergy, they were… forgive me, bulletproof, and still admired.
I figured, put it all in the blend, an alcoholic investigator, bounced from the Force, loves books and is totally conflicted by the old values of the Ireland he grew up in and this new
greedy mini-American country.
And he had to have a mouth on him… like all of the country.
It makes me smile now. Back then, the first book, there were no PIs in Ireland.
Just last week, seven years on, I checked the Yellow Pages, and we have twenty in Galway alone!
Business is brisk.
At the same time, I planned a series. Jack would be caught up in all the secrets Ireland had.
The priests, the Magdalen laundries, teenage suicides, the way the whole fabric of the country was changing.
The Magdalen Martyrs came out, by coincidence, just after the marvelous movie
The Magdalene Sisters.
Priest came out when all the horrendous scandals of the clergy emerged.
Good timing?
Pure luck or just bad karma.
I dunno.
The Guards, they told me, was the biggest mistake in a career littered with bad moves… It was nominated for the Edgar®, won the Shamus, and sold to countries I’d never even heard of.
The Killing of the Tinkers won the Macavity.
But storms on the horizon, naturally.
I have a child with Down syndrome, and in The Dramatist guess what…
Yup.
Jack is responsible for the death of a child with… fill in the blank.
I never got such hate-filled e-mail.
“How could I?”
I did what you do.
I told the truth.
Always a real bad idea.
Said I’d always intended to kill her… almost did in book three but felt she wasn’t involved enough yet in either Jack’s or the readers’ emotions.
How cold is that?
I gave up explaining that I was experiencing a parent’s worst nightmare…
the loss of
a child.
Nope.
Didn’t wash.
The sixth Jack… Cross, I went for broke and already, we’ve had all the shite about writers going too far and I was mentioned as the prime perp… The crucifixion, a year before, in Belfast, they had done exactly what I described.
Jack’s surname was a personal joke; Taylors Hill is the snotty area of Galway, a place
Jack would never have been allowed to visit.
I never expected Jack to go global… In my view, he was too Irish, too parochial, too damn perverse to have a wide appeal.
But I wrote him as he was whispering in my ear, and the first book, it was like I knew him.
And I do.
Alas.
The alcoholism is based on my late brother, a man of true warm spirit, my best friend, and he died a vagrant in the Australian outback, so I knew of what I wrote.
And when they come back at me about Jack being so angry?