THE DEVIL

Someone’s killing Jack Taylor’s friends, and there’s the devil to pay. Literally?

Galway’s leading bipolar private eye (Sanctuary, 2009, etc.), whose mood swings from the merely dark to the stygian, is at his low point again. He’d like to resign and retire; that is, “put all the past horrors of my time as a half-arsed PI behind me.” That’s because Jack Taylor’s cases have been ending unrewardingly. Oh, he cracks them brilliantly enough. It’s just that there always seems to be collateral damage—good people getting hurt, people he thinks he should have been able to protect. When Teresa Jordan asks him to investigate the disappearance of her son, he knows he should fob her off, but he can’t. She has those lovely eyes that tell of slings and arrows borne bravely, a look that to a man of Taylor’s Irish susceptibilities is irresistible. But signing on proves exactly the mistake he feared. Enter the Luciferian Mr. K, polished to a high shine and dressed to kill. From whence has he come? What does he want with the likes of Jack? Plausible answers are unforthcoming. Suddenly, however, body bags begin filling with people Taylor cares deeply about, and he finds himself one on one with…whom? Does a bespoke Italian-made shoe conceal a cloven hoof?

Between all the Xanax-popping and Jameson-swilling, Bruen keeps Jack and his adventures as mordantly funny as ever.