Jack Taylor, traumatised, bitter and hurling from his last case, has resolved to give up the finding business. However, he owes the local hard man a debt of honour and it appears easy enough: find “the Angel of the Magdalen” — a woman who helped the unfortunates incarcerated in the infamous laundry.

He is also hired by a whizz kid to prove that his father’s death was no accident. Jack treats both cases as relatively simple affairs. He becomes involved with a woman who might literally be the death of him, runs dangerously foul of the cops. He is finally clean and sober but the unfolding events will not only shake his sobriety but bring him as close to death as he could ever have imagined.

Ill-fated ex-cop Jack Taylor is broke and working nightshifts as a security guard when he receives an unexpected commission — find The Red Book, an infamous blasphemous text stolen from the Vatican archives. The thief, a rogue priest, is now believed to be hiding out in Galway. Despite Jack’s distaste for priests of any stripe, the money is just too good to turn down.

It won’t be hard for a man with Jack’s skills to track down the errant churchman, but Jack has underestimated The Red Book’s toxic lure and will be powerless to stem the wave of violence unleashed in its wake — a wave that will engulf Jack and all those around him.

After much tragedy and violence, Jack Taylor has at long last found contentment. Of course, he still knocks back too much Jameson and dabbles in uppers, but he has a new woman in his life, a freshly bought apartment, and little sign of trouble on the horizon.

But once again, trouble comes to him, this time in the form of a wealthy Frenchman who wants Jack to investigate the double-murder of his twin sons. Jack is meanwhile roped into looking after his girlfriend’s nine-year-old son, and is in for a shock with the appearance of a character from his past.

The plot is a chess game and all of the pieces seem to be moving at the behest of one dangerously mysterious player: a vigilante called ‘Silence’, because he’s the last thing his victims will ever hear.

Jack Taylor has never quite been able get his life together, but now he has truly hit rock bottom. Still reeling from a violent family tragedy, Taylor is busy drowning his grief in Jameson and uppers, as usual, when a high-profile officer in the local Garda is murdered.

After another Guard is found dead, and then another, Taylor’s old colleagues from the force implore him to take on the case. The plot is one big game, and all of the pieces seem to be moving at the behest of one dangerously mysterious team: a trio of young killers with very different styles, but who are united in their common desire to take down Jack Taylor. Their ring leader is Jericho, a psychotic girl from Galway who is grieving the loss of her lover, and who will force Jack to confront some personal trauma from his past.

As sharp and sardonic as it is starkly bleak and violent, Galway Girl shows master raconteur Ken Bruen at his best: lyrical, brutal, and ceaselessly suspenseful.

Jack Taylor has finally escaped the despair of his violent life in Galway in favor of a quiet retirement in the country with his friend Keefer, a former Rolling Stones roadie, and a falcon named Maeve. But on a day trip back into the city to sort out his affairs, Jack is hit by a truck in front of Galway’s Famine Memorial, left in a coma but mysteriously without a scratch on him.

When he awakens weeks later, he finds Ireland in a frenzy over the so-called “Miracle of Galway.” People have become convinced that the two children spotted tending to him are saintly, and the site of the accident sacred. The Catholic Church isn’t so sure, and Jack is commissioned to help find the children to verify the miracle or expose the stunt.

But Jack isn’t the only one looking for these children. A fraudulent order of nuns needs them to legitimatize its sanctity and becomes involved with a dangerous arsonist. Soon, the building in which the children are living burns down. Jack returns to his old tricks, and his old demons, as his quest becomes personal.