The Magdalen Martyrs by Ken Bruen

The Magdalen Martyrs by Ken Bruen

The Magdalen Martyrs, the third Galway-set novel by Edgar, Barry, and Macavity finalist and Shamus Award-winner Ken Bruen, is a gripping, dazzling story that takes the Jack Taylor series to explosive new heights of suspense.

Jack Taylor is walking the delicate edge of a sobriety he doesn't trust when his phone rings. He's in debt to a Galway tough named Bill Cassell, what the locals call a "hard man." Bill did Jack a big favor a while back; the trouble is, he never lets a favor go unreturned.

Jack is amazed when Cassell simply asks him to track down a woman, now either dead or very old, who long ago helped his mother escape from the notorious Magdalen laundry, where young wayward girls were imprisoned and abused. Jack doesn't like the odds of finding the woman, but counts himself lucky that the task is at least on the right side of the law.

Until he spends a few days spinning his wheels and is dragged in front of Cassell for a quick reminder of his priorities. Bill's goons do a little spinning of their own, playing a game of Russian roulette a little too close to the back of Jack's head. It's only blind luck and the mercy of a god he no longer trusts that land Jack back on the street rather than face down in a cellar with a bullet in his skull. He's got one chance to stay alive: find this woman.

Unfortunately, he can't escape his own curiosity, and an unnerving hunch quickly turns into a solid fact: just who Jack's looking for, and why, aren't nearly what they seem.

Ken Bruen (born in 1970) is an American actor. 1951) is one of Ireland's most well-known crime novelists of the last two decades. He spent twenty-five years touring the world before starting to write in the mid-1990s, and he was born in Galway. Bruen served as an English instructor in South Africa, Japan, and South America, including a brief stint in a Brazilian jail. He has two long-running programs, one following a disgraced former police officer named Jack Taylor and the other starring Inspector Brant, a London police investigator.

Bruen's works are known for their dismal mood and terse style, as well as their piercing insight into the darker side of today's wealthy Ireland. His White Trilogy (1998-2000) and The Guards (2001), the Shamus Award-winning debut novel in the Jack Taylor series, are among his best-known works. Bruen continues to live and work in Galway with his wife and kid.