A portrait of the PI from the Shamus Award winner who created him: "They don't come much tougher than Ken Bruen's Irish roughneck, Jack Taylor." -The New York Times Book Review In this short work, Edgar Award finalist Ken Bruen-"a Celtic Dashiell Hammett"-takes us deeper into his character Jack Taylor, formerly of Ireland's police force, the Garda Síochána, now a living-on-the-edge private detective (The Philadelphia Inquirer). "Jack, as ja...

"Ex-cop Jack Taylor has again hit rock bottom: one of his best friends is dead, the other has stopped speaking to him; he has given up battling his addiction to alcohol and pills; and his firing from the Irish national police, the Guards, is ancient history. He has taken up a vigilante case against a respected professor of literature at the University of Galway who has a violent habit his friends in high places are only too happy to ignore. Enter...

Galway private investigator Jack Taylor confronts an evil coterie named Headstone, who have committed a series of random, insane, violent crimes in Galway, Ireland.

Jack races to find former nemesis Ronan Meyers, who has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom. Jack supports Kate as she prepares for her operation, while Darragh comes into his own as Jack's assistant.

Jack investigates the death of a priest who has been beheaded, and discovers the cleric abused two boys several years earlier. As more secrets from the church are revealed, Jack drifts back into his old habits, and discovers more of his own demons, along with the horrendous consequences the victims of the priest's earlier abuse are still enduring.

Riddled with guilt after a personal tragedy, Jack leaves Galway for Dublin. There he meets Rosie, a young girl who witnessed her mother's murder, but has suppressed the memory. While also dealing with a travellers' feud, Jack must help Rosie to recall the events of her mother's death before the killer strikes again.

Determined to restore law and order, a group of local vigilantes known as the Pikemen is meting out its own brand of rough justice on the streets of Galway. Taylor comes face-to-face with the group during one of his investigations but soon ends up on the wrong side of the law himself.

Set Three includes three all new feature-length mysteries. Cross: When a man is found crucified, Jack's investigations reveal that the dead man's brother was responsible for the death of Norma Mitchell. Headstone: Jack is on a race against time to locate a former nemesis, Ronan Meyers, who has been kidnapped and held for ransom. Purgatory: Jack is hired by the head of a large software company to investigate the theft of valuable data.

Jack Taylor is a former cop turned private investigator with little to show for his time in the Irish Guards. Few of his former colleagues have any regard for Taylor. The exception is his friend Garda Kate Noonan, though even she has to walk a fine line. Six months sober, Taylor takes on cases with the help of his young assistant, Cody, even while he worries about his elderly mother. Try as he might, the ex-cop from Galway finds that in his hometown,...

An Edgar Award Nominee for Best Novel.
Praised by authors and critics around the globe, The Guards is the first novel in the Jack Taylor series and heralded the arrival of prominent Irish writer Ken Bruen as an essential voice in contemporary crime fiction.

Still stinging from his unceremonious ouster from the Garda Siochana—The Guards, Ireland's police force—and staring at the world through the smoky bottom

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