Book #78 Headstone

Headstone by Ken Bruen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Back to black - and a Jay. Back to Jack Taylor; cannot stay away for long, Jack.

'Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.' Irish saying, appropriate for Taylor who often bites off more than he can chew. A group called Headstone, enough to terrify Jack, this manifestation of pure evil. Who are these monsters who beat up an elderly priest. A special needs boy is brutally attacked. They appear to have an agenda as their violent spree spreads through Galway.

Jack needs to act, needs to fight back, needs to settle a score after he is ruthlessly disfigured by 'Bine' who controls Headstone. And Jack will cross the line... contacts a serious hard case named Kosta, a man completely at ease with violence for whom Jack had done a major service in the past. "I need a Mossberg pump" (not exactly something you can ring up Tesco and order.) No hesitation: : "Give me your address, I'll swing by round seven".

Jack's kind of guy....

All hell is going to break loose...

Headstone/Jack Taylor #9 - innovative noir at its best. A relentlessly paced page turner from the get go. Ken Bruen does it for me...



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Book #19 Sirens

Sirens by Joseph Knox
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

More noir than a bucket of tar. Although perhaps the protagonist does not quite fit the noir bill. Detective Constable Aidan Waits is a disgraced officer working in the sleazy drug world of Manchester. He is coerced into running a sting operation by his Superintendent, against a local drug lord. Nothing is as it seems though when he is summoned to the penthouse home of David Rossiter MP, a manipulative man with powerful friends. His daughter Isabelle has run away again. Waits is to find her but not bring her home? Waits' investigation takes him into the nocturnal, Mancunian world of drug dealers, users, prostitutes, BDSM and all things perverse.

In retracing Isabelle's steps he finds an intelligent seventeen-year-old girl who is scared to death of something. And how is her predicament linked to the unsolved disappearance of a young woman just like her? All along, Waits struggles with his own redemption. He is a user - cocaine, uppers, downers - more often than not he doesn't know whether he is 'up' or 'down'. How can this troubled junior detective come out of this alive as he is stalked by an unseen killer.... Is there a common denominator that links all of these events?

This first novel from Joseph Knox is a tough read, not for the squeamish. It is dark and brutal and utterly compelling.

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