Book #29 Priest

Priest by Ken Bruen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Read back to back with Jack Taylor #4. I had to. Events at the end of The Dramatist left me reeling. Could anything worse have befallen Jack? Is Galway the kind of place to seek redemption? God, Jack - I really felt your despair. Your tortured soul. And the dark fiction continues in Priest.

Jack leaves hospital - the madhouse, the loony bin - where he has been for several months. Refuses further medication - "I felt my eyes retreat from the nine-yard stare, move away from the dead place." How did he finish up in an asylum? He doesn't remember. Collected by female Guard Ni Iomaire for his return to life in Galway even though the disfunction of their alliance continues, unabated. Does Jack have any friends left? Will he stay on the wagon? And as a new life beckons, Father Joyce is decapitated in a Galway confessional, shocking even the most hardened cynics and Jack is asked to find his killer, in the church rocked by scandal of the most disturbing nature.

Murder, conspiracy and a real danger for Jack - close and personal. Jack is a broken human-being. Past events continue to haunt his every waking hour as he continues to fight his alcoholism. But he does and he survives. Like it or not Jack you are a sensitive individual and I am concerned about what happens to you because Ken Bruen has written another gut-wrenching end to a fine book.

So, I am going to catch my breath before moving onto #6....

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Book #28 The Dramatist

The Dramatist by Ken Bruen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jack Taylor number four. I'm on a roll. More dark, disturbing, hard-boiled entertainment. Hang on just a minute. Lemsip and yoghurt. Daily fare for a re-invented Jack?! Not drinking, no drugs, virtually quit smoking and - yeah - that's correct - attending mass fairly regularly! Has Jack finally succumbed to a life less wired? Huh? So why the hell do you keep getting beaten up?! Are you still the 'finder' everyone admires, albeit in a rather disingenuous fashion? Who the hell are the Pikemen? Are they for real or just a fantasy of Irish imagination? And Cathy persuades you to visit your ex-dealer serving a six stretch in Mountjoy prison. He wants you to 'find out' about his sister's questionable death. Fell down the stairs and broke her neck. Really? How are things going off the booze, Jack? Coping? Your one redemption in life is being Godfather to the daughter of Jeff and Cathy. Serena May, a child with Down's syndrome. You love that child; you babysit and you read to her. A shining star in your bleak life.

And then, those last few pages. That stunning, horrific, conclusion. A few lines of prose that will rip your heart out. Left me gasping, distraught. Read those lines over and over. Oh dear God, no....

Ken Bruen has an undeniable talent for noir. His prose shines. This is entertainment, for me, of the highest order. It's black, it's Irish. But that ending. I have to move on to number five in the series.

What the hell happens to Jack.......

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Book #27 The Magdalen Martyrs

The Magdalen Martyrs by Ken Bruen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Back to Jack. Cannot help it. I love Ken Bruen's books - the Jack Taylor series. This is the third. The ex-Garda protagonist, hapless alcoholic, one might say hopeless as well, Jack staggers through life in Galway as a kind of honorary private detective and a mess of a human being. Hired by thugs who recognise his tough-guy bravado. Doesn’t quite work out for Jack, never does. He does get laid; the drugs help. This is real Irish noir. I know there are those that don’t like this series. But I enjoy Jack’s company. He loves reading and festoons his narrative with apt quotes from favourite authors. His hangovers are legendary. But somehow he always finds a way back. And the plot, for what it is, ingeniously incorporates the Magdalen laundry, a notoriously harsh home for wayward girls.

This series is a treat. Number three is dark, bleak and very funny at times. The best so far, for me.

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Book #26 The Sellout

The Sellout by Paul Beatty
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There is satire and then there is satire and The Sellout has it in spades. This burlesque lampooning in a send-up of race and politics in America is hilarious, outrageous, provocative and brilliant. There are laugh-out-loud moments (be careful where you read it!) and page after page of pure genius. It will undoubtedly appeal more to American readers, but wherever you are, do not miss this winner of The Man Booker Prize 2016.

Damn, I nearly choked on my burger…..

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Book #25 Pyotr Tchaikovsky: Critical Lives

Pyotr Tchaikovsky by Philip Ross Bullock
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am very fond of much of the music composed by Tchaikovsky. The ballet suites Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker all contain beautiful melodies. There is melancholia too in his work. Who is not moved by the 2nd movement of the String Quartet No.1, the requiem like Symphony No.6 Pathétique or the soaring Romeo & Juliet Fantasy?

This account of Tchaikovsky’s life by Philip Ross Bullock, Professor of Russian Literature and Music at the University of Oxford is just one of the series Critical Lives published by Reaktion Books. Bullock draws extensively on the composer’s uncensored letters and diaries and explores Tchaikovsky’s central place within the artistic culture of nineteenth-century Russia. The composer was recognised as a figure of international renown.

Nadezhda von Meck was the wealthy widow of a railway magnate and became an influential patron to Tchaikovsky for many years. Much of his income came from her. Astonishing then that they never met, although they exchanged hundreds of letters. It came as a shock then, when in 1890 she suddenly withdrew her patronage following what appeared to be her own financial ruin.

It was well known amongst members of his family and his peers and associates that Tchaikovsky was homosexual and naively confessional. He yearned for a quiet life and found the social obligations that fame entailed - burdensome. His marriage ‘of convenience’ in 1877 to Antonina Milyukova was short lived. His letters at that time showed a sense of anxiety and foreboding. The marriage was never consummated.

Tchaikovsky’s sudden and unexpected death in October 1893 occurred just nine days after the first performance of the Pathétique. He died from cholera at the age of 53.

Bullock’s account will be of significant interest for all those who enjoy classical music, containing as it does introductions to the composer’s most recognised pieces and a select Discography.

5 stars from me for this comprehensive insight into Russia’s most celebrated composer.

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Book #24 Trains And Buttered Toast

Trains And Buttered Toast by John Betjeman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This wonderful book is a record of most of the best of John Betjeman’s radio talks for the BBC - most of them broadcast in the 40s and 50s, the golden age of wireless. Betjeman had a boundless capacity to delight and inspire and is undoubtedly one of our best-loved poets. His great passion was for architecture, particularly churches and he is reckoned to have visited more than 5,000 in his time. Eccentric, enthusiastic, whimsical and often belligerent he is at home here with his tales of trains, buttered toast, hymn-writing vicars and Regency terraces.

For me this is a book full of nostalgia (a word that Betjeman disliked, said it reminded him of neuralgia! He preferred the word sentimentality). Nevertheless, in these pages I am reminded so much of my own carefree childhood, spent in Kent in the period following the end of the 2nd World War. Here are a few lines taken from ’Coming Home, Or England Revisited’, broadcast on Thursday 25th February 1943:

’For me, at any rate, England stands for the Church of England, eccentric incumbents, oil-lit churches, Women’s Institutes, modest village inns, arguments about cow parsley on the altar, the noise of mowing machines on Saturday afternoons, local newspapers, local auctions, the poetry of Tennyson, Crabbe, Hardy and Matthew Arnold, local talent, local concerts, a visit to the cinema, branch-line trains, light railways, leaning on gates and looking across fields….’

These talks are a fitting memorial to what set Betjeman’s pulses racing and what he feared the loss of and are no longer of course a guide to what can be seen today. But as a picture, a snapshot of past times in the country I love, this is nostalgia (sorry, sentimentality) at its best.

Thank you Sir John. I loved it.

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Book #23 Quieter Than Killing

Quieter Than Killing by Sarah Hilary
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A new DI Marnie Rome novel is always something to savour. This is the fourth in a remarkable series and Sarah Hilary just keeps getting better. Erudite writing with a very complex plot.

A vigilante is at loose on the streets. A child is in danger. Sometimes staying silent is the only way to survive...

DI Marnie Rome and her bagman DS Noah Jake are once again treading the mean streets of London investigating a series of vigilante assaults, that are terrifying in their horrific nature. The attacks seem random. There are victims - and victims of victims, enough to make your head spin. And suddenly it becomes personal for Marnie when her family home is ransacked, the tenants savagely beaten and there are signs that the burglary (is that what it was?) can only have been committed by someone who knows her.

When a child goes missing Marnie is horrified to learn that no one has reported it and it becomes evident that the young boy is the son of a man currently incarcerated at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Does her step-brother Stephen have anything to do with this? Past events are brought into the chilling present, where street gangs are rife. And where does Noah’s brother Sol fit into this? What is Sol so scared of?

There are pages of brutality that are hard to read. The treatment meted out to the kidnapped child is harrowing. And how are all these events linked?

This is dark, compelling and emotionally intense. There are passages that I read over several times for the sheer quality of the writing:

” ‘Detective Inspector Marnie Rome’. He liked the round sound of the words, like pebbles, like those from the beach where his dad carried him down to the sea. He whispered the pebbles to the room, ‘Detective Inspector Marnie Rome’, and stared at the light under the door until the yellow line came back. When it opened——“

Set aside time for these 400+ pages because, once started, you will not want to put it down. And I wonder how soon it will be before we read about a newly promoted Detective Chief Inspector Marnie Rome? It might be just speculation on my part; I will just have to wait and see….

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