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    The Magdalen Martyrs: A Jack Taylor Novel
    The Magdalen Martyrs: A Jack Taylor Novel
    The Magdalen Martyrs: A Jack Taylor Novel
    Ebook261 pages3 hours

    The Magdalen Martyrs: A Jack Taylor Novel

    By Ken Bruen

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    About this ebook

    The Magdalen Martyrs, the third Galway-set novel by Edgar, Barry, and Macavity finalist and Shamus Award-winner Ken Bruen, is a gripping, dazzling story that takes the Jack Taylor series to explosive new heights of suspense.

    Jack Taylor is walking the delicate edge of a sobriety he doesn't trust when his phone rings. He's in debt to a Galway tough named Bill Cassell, what the locals call a "hard man." Bill did Jack a big favor a while back; the trouble is, he never lets a favor go unreturned.

    Jack is amazed when Cassell simply asks him to track down a woman, now either dead or very old, who long ago helped his mother escape from the notorious Magdalen laundry, where young wayward girls were imprisoned and abused. Jack doesn't like the odds of finding the woman, but counts himself lucky that the task is at least on the right side of the law.

    Until he spends a few days spinning his wheels and is dragged in front of Cassell for a quick reminder of his priorities. Bill's goons do a little spinning of their own, playing a game of Russian roulette a little too close to the back of Jack's head. It's only blind luck and the mercy of a god he no longer trusts that land Jack back on the street rather than face down in a cellar with a bullet in his skull. He's got one chance to stay alive: find this woman.

    Unfortunately, he can't escape his own curiosity, and an unnerving hunch quickly turns into a solid fact: just who Jack's looking for, and why, aren't nearly what they seem.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 1, 2007
    ISBN9781429902359
    The Magdalen Martyrs: A Jack Taylor Novel
    Author

    Ken Bruen

    Ken Bruen is one of the most prominent Irish crime writers of the last two decades. He received a doctorate in metaphysics, taught English in South Africa, and then became a crime novelist. He is the recipient of two Barry Awards, two Shamus Awards and has twice been a finalist for the Edgar Award. He lives in Galway, Ireland.

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    Reviews for The Magdalen Martyrs

    4/5

    13 ratings10 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I heard about Ken Bruen's books from another person on LibraryThing. Since Bruen is Irish and sets his books in Galway I was immediately interested as I like all things Irish. Unfortunately this particular Irish writer choses to portray the dark underbelly of Ireland using a main character that constantly fights the demons of alcoholism and drug use. One of those attributes might have worked for me but together I felt like I was drowning in filth. The only redeeming feature, to my point of view, is that the main character is a reader and frequently quotes from books he has read. Also each chapter starts off with a book quote. That's not enough to convince me to pick up any more books from this writer.
    • 4/5
      This is the third book in the Jack Taylor series, and we find that not much has changed with Jack. He's still living in the same third rate hotel and being looked after by the octogenarian woman who owns the establishment. He is still drinking, smoking and taking all kinds of drugs. And he keeps finding himself in personal danger as he pursues his lines of enquiries. Jack is fully aware of his shortcomings, and he has oodles of coping mechanisms to help him deal with his self-loathing. For example he is a voracious reader, and he retreats to his books whenever he needs to find time to think. Only the best for our Jack - books from his favourite used bookstore, clothes from the charity shops and a full pharmacopia of drugs in the floorboards of his room. I love these books. Bruen's writing is spare and to the point. He says more in such few words than most novelists can manage in large tomes. We see the dark underside of Galway, Ireland through Jack's jaded eyes (and usually through an alcoholic fog). In this book we pursue some of the history and the horror stories from the now-closed Magdalen Laundry in Galway. Many young girls were left here and forgotten when they found themselves unmarried and pregnant, or on the wrong side of the law. The establishment opened in the 18th century and were finally closed sometime in the mid-20th century. The stories that come from these Catholic institutions are horrendous and heartbreaking and Jack finds himself drawn into them while he's trying to find someone who used to work in the laundry at one time. This is a quick read, but a very good one. Kept me turning pages for sure.
    • 3/5
      Couldn't capture my interest. The Jack Taylor character is too much this time.
    • 5/5
      Bruen's noir style is clipped and to the point. Through Jack Taylor, he might make you laugh and cry on the same page. Even though Taylor is a drunken drug addict, he still captures the heart as an ex-Garda who is willing to take on the criminals of Galway single-handed. Another impressive Emerald noir story from Bruen. As usual, it's a good idea to take note of his music and reading.
    • 5/5
      My third Jack Taylor. No one writes like Ken.
    • 3/5
      This is book #3 of the Jack Taylor series. If you read the reviews, you'll see they are polarizing novels. Some see them as a celtic noir take on pulp fiction, others find them unrelentingly grim & derivative.
      Jack's past is well established & informs his situation & choices. Hopelessly addicted to booze & anything else that blurs his reality, this is a man desperate to forget the past while trying to decide if he wants a future. The books are narrated in the first person, full of Jack's personal allusions to literary snippets that speak to him & brutal self awareness.
      This instalment follows the author's typical format of weaving together two stories: a new missing persons investigation & Jack's current position on his downward spiral. After being hospitalized for seizures, Jack is back on the wagon. He's contacted by Bill Cassell, a hard man who calls in a favour. Bill is dying & wants Jack to find Rita Monroe, a woman who helped his mother when she was an inmate at the infamous Magdalen laundries.
      Jack is anxious to clear his debt & takes the job. In fleeting moments of sobriety, he excels as a finder & soon has a second case. Terry Boyle, a smug young businessman, wants Jack to prove his step mother killed his father. Officially it was labelled a heart attack but Terry believes his dad got a little help from Kirsten the trophy wife.
      Jack enlists the help of Brendan Flood, another ex-guard who found religion. He investigates the Magdalen while Jack tracks down Rita. Meanwhile, two young men who are college students are assassinated in seemingly random attacks.
      Both of his cases lead Jack to women who will play pivotal roles. One is Kirsten, a manipulative pleasure seeking widow with friends in high places. The other is Rita. She used to work as a matron at the Magdalen in the 1950's & is not exactly what Jack is expecting.
      Interspersed with the current events are short vignettes of daily life at the laundry. It was a home for "troubled" girls, unwed mothers, petty thieves & those whose parents couldn't afford to keep them. This was an actual facility run by the church & when the truth about the living conditions/treatment of the girls was later revealed, the resulting scandal shook all of Ireland.
      How you rate this book is not really a question of whether or not it's well written. It's a matter of taste. The reader spends a lot of time in Jack's head, an interesting if bleak place. He's a compelling guy. He changes his vices like his socks & when he temporarily stops drinking it's a small victory as he shifts to a diet of pharmaceuticals. Of all the people out to get him, he is his own worst enemy.
      The one constant in his life are his beloved books & he has a quote for every occasion. The author leaves the flowery prose to these writers, telling his story in lean, spare sentences that run the gamut from starkly poetic to the blackest humour from a character who is brutally honest with himself.
      The rest of the cast are not exactly little rays of sunshine either. With 2 possible exceptions, these are not nice people. They are unburdened by morals, users with hidden agendas & we gradually learn Jack is being set up. In spite of his commitment to self destruction, he shows a surprising talent for survival. And some of the characters who underestimated his resilience will pay.
      This is not a beach book. It's dark, violent, sad & meditative. But there also moments when you catch a glimpse of something bearing a passing resemblance to hope. The story of the Magdalen is heartbreaking because it's true. But the investigation aspect of the plot takes a back seat to the character study of our "hero".
      It all boils down to Jack. It can be like watching an impending train wreck & if you find him compelling, you'll enjoy this. If not, you probably won't give the series a second chance.
    • 4/5
      Completed 6/8, rating 3 1/2. 3rd in series, 4th I've read, about 8 in series. Jack is on the wagon, then off. Not just off, but off big time. More here on pharmacology than on crime. The usual quotes, book recommendations (someone has ripped up Jack's library). And Jack dispenses Jack justice - kneecapping one bad guy, slugging another on his death bed, killing a third in self defense but that doesn't really matter, and framing a 4th for muder because he couldn't prove this killer guilty of the crime that the killer probably committed.
    • 5/5
      Another third instalment only this time this one is as good if not better than the preceding two books in the series. Jack Taylor is a disgraced ex-cop from Galway in Ireland. He managed to let the drink get the better of him and he's also developed quite a drug habit too. At the conclusion of the last book Jack had found himself owing a couple of debts to local gangster Bill Cassell and now it's time to pay them off. The slate will be wiped clean if Jack manages to find the whereabouts of a woman who used to work at the Magdalen laundry. In the fifties, unwed mothers were placed there by their families or the Church. It was an abusive place to be. Not only were the girls forced to do laundry in conditions that a Japanese WWII prisoner of war camp frowned upon but they were subjected to all kinds of physical and mental tortures. Many of the girls committed suicide rather than endure more of the punishments.Bill tells Jack that the woman he wants found is the one who helped his mother escape from the place and he wants to thank her personally for her kindness. Jack has just come off a bender and so is in no fit state to ask the right questions of Bill and also has no choice but to accept the job. Jack is also asked to look into the death of a young man's father. He thinks his stepmother might have killed him but the police have it down as a heart attack and with no post-mortem before the body was cremated it's not going to be an easy one to prove.Both cases have twists and turns though it's not really the mystery that galvanizes this series. That belongs to the character of Jack Taylor. A man of many flaws but one you can't help but want to survive at least another day so you can continue reading of his ongoing trevails
    • 5/5
      The Magdalene Asylums, as they were called, were institutions for "fallen women". The first opened in Dublin in the 1700s. The objective was to rehabilitate these misguided women and release them back into society. These places were maintained by nuns. The inmates were used for hard manual labor, mainly in laundries and were subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. Many took their own lives.Jack Taylor, our favorite alcoholic ex-cop from Galway, is hired by a local gangster to locate a particularly nasty nun, nicknamed Lucifer, who abused his mother, fifty years earlier, in a Magdalene “Home”. Bruen has a gritty but poetic narrative style and seems to have a deep understanding of chemical dependency. This is the third book in a terrific series! Highly recommended!
    • 5/5
      Ken Bruen's writing feels like home to me. Not that I live in the world of addiction and despair and brutal measures - or, for that matter, anywhere near Ireland - but I connected with every word and phrase at some deep and visceral level. I found myself thinking that KB's truths were the most true, his observations the most stark and real, his characters the most honest, for all their bleakness. The heartbreaking backbone story is merely the structure on which the rest of the book, and all its relationships, hang - as I've said many times before, this is how I think crime writing should work. The *only* issue I had was that, though I found 80% of the quotes preceding the chapters absolutely brilliant, I did not understand how they related to the story. My deficit, I'm sure, but still...OTOH, the contemporary/retro literature/music references weave into a background that - more than the sum of its parts - sets the narrator in place and time beautifully (even though I've never been to Ireland and, I'm sure, missed quite a bit of what makes the book, according to the Washington Post, "gloriously Irish").Didn't want this book to end. Going back to buy more.

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    The Magdalen Martyrs - Ken Bruen

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