Book Review: The Guards

Reviewed By: Dusty Rhoades - RAM

The Guards     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon UK PB Amazon UK HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Ken Bruen
Class/Genre:   Mystery
Series: Jack Taylor # 1
St. Martin’s, Jan 2003, $23.95, 304 pp.

It's not easy to get thrown out of the Garda Siochana-Ireland's national police force. It's even harder to get thrown out for drunkenness. After all, as one of Jack Taylor's trainers at the police barracks used to tell him, "We all like a pint.and the public likes us to like a pint." But Jack's love of whisky and short temper managed to get him cashiered. Now, from his barstool in Galway, Jack aspires to be Ireland's best, maybe only, private investigator. When an attractive woman asks him to investigate the death of her daughter, officially ruled a suicide, Jack's not sure he's up to the job. He soon finds out how right he is.

A story about an alcoholic ex-cop turned PI naturally invites comparisons to Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder novels. There are some similarities, but Ken Bruen's "The Guards" is not your standard mystery novel. In fact, the mystery part of the book actually gets "solved" fairly early on. It's the fallout from that, and Jack's attempts to deal with it, that form the book's real story. In the course of that story, Jack's alcoholism and general self -destructiveness becomes almost as much an antagonist as any of the nasties out to get him. Sometimes it seems a race to see which one will do him in first.

What keeps you racing through the book is Bruen's prose. The writing here is simple, almost stark. The story is mostly told though dialogue and asides to the reader, shot through with dark Irish wit and quick flashes of poetry. It's a short, fast read that I couldn't put down. I give it four and a half stars. Just remember, however as Brad Pitt said to Harrison Ford in the movie "The Devils' Own," "It's not an American story. It's an Irish one. Don't look for a happy ending."

Dusty Rhoades - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Dusty Rhoades - RAM