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The Emerald Lie

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
An Irish crime novel featuring ex-cop Jack Taylor from an author “among the most original and innovative noir voices of the last two decades” (Los Angeles Review of Books).
 
In The Emerald Lie, the latest terror to be visited upon the dark Galway streets arrives in a most unusual form: a Cambridge graduate who becomes murderous over split infinitives, dangling modifiers, and any other sign of bad grammar. Meanwhile, Jack is approached by a grieving father with a pocketful of cash on offer if Jack will help exact revenge on those responsible for his daughter’s brutal rape and murder. Though hesitant to get involved, Jack agrees to get a read on the likely perpetrators.
 
But Jack is soon derailed by the reappearance of Emily (previous alias: Emerald), the chameleon-like young woman who joined forces with Jack to take down her pedophile father in Green Hell and who remains passionate, clever, and utterly homicidal. She will use any sort of coercion to get Jack to conspire with her against the serial killer the Garda have nicknamed “the Grammarian,” but her most destructive obsession just might be Jack himself.
 
“Nobody writes like Ken Bruen, with his ear for lilting Irish prose and his taste for the kind of gallows humor heard only at the foot of the gallows.” —Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 4, 2016
      Brooding thoughts of suicide and loss haunt Jack Taylor in Irish author Bruen’s desultory 12th novel featuring the Galway PI and former Garda officer (after 2015’s Green Hell). Of course, Jack is also preoccupied with lists of the authors he has been reading, the music he listens to, and the TV shows he binge watches. The main menace this round may be the Grammarian, who kills over gaffes in speech. But a side trip to London puts Jack in the sphere of another criminal with an interest in young children. Series regulars such as the deadly Emily/Emerald and Sergeant Ridge, a former police colleague of Jack’s, make the scene, though Galway and its living history trumps the players that strut across the stage. With his easy episodic survey of the moment-to-moment in Jack’s life—each sip of Jameson, every walking of the dog, the sudden beatings and murders—Bruen remains on the mountaintop of contemporary Irish noir. Sprightly, elliptical prose is a plus (“the ubiquitous McDonald’s bag. In my time, weapons are always delivered thus”). Agent: Lukas Ortiz, Philip G. Spitzer Literary Agency.

    • Booklist

      July 1, 2016
      On learning that he has three months to live, former PI Jack Taylor says, Least now I never have to read Salman Rushdie. Veteran Bruen readers will sense that something's off with Jack even before the diagnosis comes in: his rants about present-day Ireland, the Catholic Church, and his own failings are muted, almost perfunctory. He's comfortable and happy walking his new Labrador puppy and watching American TV shows like Breaking Bad and The Wire, even opining that the latter is the Great American Novel. Jack has become an old man, his screeds lacking his characteristic splenetic panache. He even seems to be drinking less. But Jack's Galway remains chock-a-block with madness. A serial killer known as the Grammarian is murdering people on the street who use incorrect grammar, then going home for a refreshing DIY electroconvulsive-therapy session. But charming, crazy, murderous Emily/Emerald reappears; she knows the Grammarian and wants him dead. Will this be the final Jack Taylor novel? Bruen aficionados will be eagerly waiting for a second opinion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

    • Library Journal

      April 1, 2016

      Even as he cautiously agrees to help a devastated father find those responsible for his daughter's gruesome rape and murder, vigilante Jack Taylor works with spitfire new sidekick Emily (who called herself Emerald in Green Hell) to waylay the serial killer nicknamed the Grammarian--he's an Eton and Cambridge graduate who kills over dangling modifiers. Two Barry and Shamus awards apiece and two Edgar nominations make Bruen a don't-miss author.

      Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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