Rating: 
Summary: Good "Kinda Detective but Mostly Drinking" Novel
Review: A gritty, alcohol-fuelled private investigator novel set in Galway, Ireland. This is very much in the vein of the 'down and out" detective novels I have read, but transplanted to Ireland and better written than most. There are some differences however as the main character, does not really solve or investigate anything but rather just goes from one drunken, blacked-out binge to another stirring up trouble that eventually solves many of the problems itself. I enjoyed the literary interest of the main character and the author uses this to add some great background flavour to the story. The Irish setting also provides for some unique characters, interestingly different local practices and settings.
It's a short book. I don't think I've read a book this fast before but haven't said that much of the quick finish was that I didn't want to put it down, enjoying the bleak but real world the author had created.
Rating: 
Summary: "Believable, in-your-face, and real...."
Review: Believable, in-your-face, and real; you are there, sitting across the table, eavesdropping at the next bar stool. It leaps off every page and makes you part of Jack Taylor's world. I was grabbed from the first sentence of the first page by the self-destructive soul of Jack Taylor; a soul that could only be cauterized by alcohol and cocaine. Yes, that's dark. But it's too narrow an assessment. If you have a dark side ( and how many of us have, if we're honest) you will find a memory or two in the lost evenings and anguished mornings of Jack Taylor. But where there is dark, there must also be light. And that light is there, perhaps dim at times, but it's there. It's there in the women who love him, in the people who still trust him, in the friends who care for him, in himself too: his ability to pick himself up again, his sense of justice, his attempts to find and punish the evil ones. There's the humour too, always there, black humour maybe, but it's the fabric that saves Jack Taylor and the people who populate Ken Bruen's Galway from absolute despair. Yes, Jack Taylor finds his anaesthetic in cocaine and alcohol. But he also finds it in books. It seems at times that he could just as easily be tempted into Charlie Byrne's as into his local pub. If you love to read (and I suspect you wouldn't be reading this unless you do) you'll be able to 'stack' Jack Taylor's selections on your own book shelves as you get lost in this dark trek through the netherworld of Galway. Maybe Ken Bruen is doing for Galway what Joyce did for Dublin in Ulysses: giving us a map of a Galway that is rapidly disappearing under the paws of the Celtic Tiger. That's it. Buy the book, tell your friends, buy some more................
Rating:
Summary: Immensely entertaining
Review: Here's a book that stands the typical procedural format on its ear. There isn't another novel like it anywhere. With exemplary skill, Bruen makes plot secondary to characterization, and splendid characters abound--primarily his hero Jack, a fatalistic ex-cop with a wonderfully self-deprecating sense of humor, along with a great and vulnerable heart--and lists, of anything and everything. Chapter headers with quotes from here, there and everywhere--from popular mystery writers to classics. On top of all that, author Bruen writes about the disease of alcoholism with great accuracy and not a single maudlin note. The Guards reads like simultaneous gunshots to the head and the heart. It is a stunning accomplishment.
My highest recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: You gotta' read this guy!
Review: I'm not sure where Ken Bruen came from. The "Publisher's-Editors" notes/reviews at the top of the intro recite "The Guards" as Bruen's debut novel. This is misleading as the book reveals nine other novels Bruen has written, The Guards being the tenth. I am certain that if you read this one you'll be hooked. It's 2:30 in the morning and I couldn't put it down. That's the best compliment you can give an author. Jack Taylor is often drunk. He hangs around drinkers and flirts with the insanity that constant drunkenness and binge drinking create. All of his relationships have been gunned down in the crossfire of alcohol. His friend Sutton is a vicious man that on rare occasions of sobriety, Jack rationalizes and explains to himself. He is kind to winos as in the ancient Padraig. He says 'I drink with'em; then buy them a foolish wreath when they die.' His closest friend is Sean, a bar owner. All of this takes place in Galway, Ireland, where Jack Taylor has disgraced himself and been cashiered out of the Siochna Guards, nearly impossible to do, and lost everything along the way. A lovely woman, Ann, asks Jack to disprove the notion, public and private, that her teenage daughter committed suicide, and thereby proving that she was murdered. Jack begins to suspect that she stepped in front of harm's way from a part-time job she had at a business owned by shady characters. There's a lot of James Crumley's "The Wrong Case" in The Guards. There is one enormous difference: we generally dislike Milo Milodragovitch and we can't help rooting for Jack. Bruen's humor is infectious. Jack visits his father's grave when Ann takes him to see the marker for her daughter, Sarah, and mutters, "Da, I'm here by default. But aren't we all?" His assistant "finder," Cathy B. who is a (just past) teenage ingenue in the subculture of the Irish Rock world, is marrying another performer and asks Jack to give her away, explaining the criteria of her request, "You're the oldest man I know." Later, one of the characters asks of the recent disappearance of another character, "Did he die or did he go to England?" Twists and turns up to the last page, retribution, reality, dialogue, sadness, introspection, coming to grips with the consequences of one's acts. This may be the best mystery I read this year! Kudos to Bruen.
Rating:
Summary: Gritty Novel
Review: If you like George Pelecanos' early work, you almost certainly will like this writer. Bruen's writing style takes sparse to a whole new level. Most of these chapters are 2-3 pages at most but this is not a criticism. The book is very focused. If you are looking for a travelogue of Galway, Ireland disguised as a mystery, this is not the book for you. If you are looking for a well-written, sparse but focused, dark (and reading the other reviews I don't really need to expound on this) novel. This is a great way to spend a couple of days.
Rating:
Summary: This Is Black Irish
Review: If you like Ian Rankin, you will like Ken Bruen. Mr. Bruen is just a bit more...brutal, I think, although both really get into the dark aspects of their characters and subjects. I have read five of Mr. Bruen's books, and look forward to more, even though they make me afraid of what is possible in our world.
Rating:
Summary: terse crime thriller
Review: In Galway, Ireland, Ann Henderson visits finder (there are no private detectives in this country) Jack Taylor in his office, a table at Grogan's Pub. Jack is an alcoholic former Garda who was fired for hitting a VIP. Ann hires Jack to look into the death of her beloved sixteen year old daughter Sarah, ruled a suicide. Ann does not believe her daughter would leave her so alone in life and then there was the anonymous phone call insisting the teen was drowned. Jack asks his partner Catherine Bellingham to do some computer research. Cathy learns that the victim worked at Planters where two other young girls also killed themselves and that the manager plays golf with the Garda superintendent and hires police guards as moonlighters. As he digs deeper two thugs beat up Jack, warning him to back off, but he recognizes the shoes as belonging to the Garda. Jack continues his inquiries while other incidents occur, but whether it is the alcohol providing false courage or just Ann encouraging him, he refuses to quit until he uncovers the truth of what happened to Sarah. THE GUARDS is a terse crime thriller that grips the audience from the onset because the protagonist is a hard-boiled antihero acting heroically. Readers will like the lead character, though many will prefer he give up the booze, but then readers wouldn't know Jack. Though some personal subplots explain Jack, they also take away from the fast-paced story line that will remind the audience of the 1930s detectives as Ken Bruen provides an engaging urban noir that hijacks readers from start to finish. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: The Guards is nearly impossible to put down!
Review: Jack Taylor has become his own worst enemy. Relieved from duty with the Irish Garda Siochana in Galway due to frequent bouts of alcoholic indiscretions --- and trouble controlling a smart mouth --- he now holds himself out as a PI, an extremely rare breed in Ireland. The Irish don't like squealers and they view private investigators as close kin to squealers. But one night in a pub, a desperate mother, Ann Henderson, seeks Jack's help. She believes her daughter's death, which has been officially slated as a teenage suicide, was more like murder. Jack takes on the job. Using an unlikely group of his misfit cronies, he employs some questionable techniques. In doing so, he stirs up a wasp's nest of unwelcome interest. What at first seemed a quick look-into turns deadly serious. Crying his downtrodden Irish blues, Jack comes across as caustic, often disingenuous and mostly well meaning --- at least, I think. I'm not sure and I'm not sure he's sure. In his lucid spells, meaning when he's not totally wrecked by the booze, he has moments of grand profundity, although any gems that come along he tersely delivers. His life feels bleak, always on the verge of one disaster or another, but he has moments of relative contentment. Literary quotes --- some classic, some contemporary --- are woven throughout the chapters, demonstrating our questionable hero's intellectual side. While a wee bit distracting, it adds a playful dimension to the tale. The abundant dialogue proves Jack a fellow who is quick on his feet with a sassy comeback always close at hand. In fact, the dialogue is so engaging that you hardly notice the plot slowly advancing. It seems that Jack dabbles at working on the case, becomes sidetracked for a few short chapters and then pokes around at a few more clues. His methods, however, yield results --- just not always positive ones. Ken Bruen writes with an economy of words. He doesn't use very many in this 291-page book, but he makes every one of them count. Simply put, he delivers all meat and no fat. I never read a book in a day. I always savor. However, THE GUARDS is nearly impossible to stretch over more than one sitting. Mr. Bruen's style, unique and near poetic, commands a literary orgy once you start. It reads so fast that it will leave your head spinning. And the twists the story takes --- and there are plenty of them --- will leave your entire being stunned. Now, excuse me, I have to go and find more of Ken Bruen's books. One was definitely not enough. --- Reviewed by Kate Ayers
Rating:
Summary: A fine well written work
Review: Jack Taylor was recently thrown out of the Irish Police Force, AKA The Guards. He now functions as a PI when he manages to remain sober. He is asked by a beautiful woman to look into the apparent suicide of the woman's sixteen year old daughter. She feels it is likely to be murder. To find out the answer, Jack must walk the mean streets of Galway.
Short, chapters that serve almost as vignettes are the principal form of this impressive work. Dialogue alone makes up quite a bit of the novel. Characters are quite realistic, yet little action occurs. The personal angst the main protagonist undergoes is quite reminiscent of a James Crumbley novel. Crumbley actually provides a testimonial on the back cover. I really don't enjoy the depressing realism of Crumbley and the same holds true for this novel. I fully realize this is a fine, well written work. It just isn't to my personal taste.
Rating:
Summary: No Guarded Humor
Review: Ken Bruen's The Guards is an Irish noir narrated by Jack Taylor, ex-Garda and struggling alcoholic, who, in between pints, finds himself investigating the suicide of a Galaway teenager. Even though Jack spends very little time unraveling the mysterious cause of the suicide, the story is redeemed by its incredible dialog and dark wit.
Jack is funny. His interactions with other characters make his drunkenness and procrastination forgivable:
"The traveler is mid-twenties, bangled in every conceivable area. She says, 'Caffeine will kill you, man.'
I don't figure this requires a reply. She says, 'Did you hear me, man?'
'Yeah, so what.'
She scoots a little closer, asks,
'What's with the negative waves?'
A cloud of patchouli envelopes me. I decide to cut through the hippy pose, say, '%#@ off.'
'Oh man, you're transmitting some serious hostility.'
My coffee's gone cold and I put it down. She asks,
'Did you have red carpets in your home as a child?'
'What?'
'Feng Shui says it makes a child aggressive.'
'We had lino. Brown, puke-tinged shade. It came with the house.'
'Oh.'
I stand up and she cries,
'Where were you when John died?'
'In bed.'
'The Walrus will never die.'
'Perish the thought.'"
The above scene is typical of The Guards: well written, entertaining dialog that has nothing to do with a criminal investigation. Throughout the novel, we watch Jack drink, walk to the pub, move out of an apartment, and get a haircut--all of which stray from the book's main event. However, Bruen is such a remarkable writer that all of Jack's mundane activities seem engaging.
The Guards is a crime novel that does not focus on the crime. Instead, the author entertains readers with sharp dialog and a sarcastic narrator.
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