Ken Bruen

Bio:

In addition to writing several of the most acclaimed British and Irish crime novels of the past decade, has a varied past that includes stints teaching in Africa and Vietnam, four months in a South American prison, a brief period as a security guard at the World Trade Center, and work as an actor for horror film director Roger Corman. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He is the author of numerous books, including the award-winning Jack Taylor series. In 2006, Ken Bruen won two prestigious Spanish awards, The Premios Brigada 21 award and also The Premio Novelpol 2006, whose shortlist included John Connolly, Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly. He lives in Galway, Ireland.

Works:

Once We Were Cops (St. Martin’s Press, Nov. 2008)

This blistering heart-stopping Stand-alone thriller set in New York City is award-wimming author Ken Bruen at his finest.

Michael O’Shea is a member of the Guards – Ireland’s police force. He’s also a psychopath, who is teetering on the edge of insanity. When an exchange program is put in place and twenty Guards come to America and twenty cops from the States go to Ireland, Shay, as he’s known, has his lifelong dream come true— he becomes a member of the NYPD. But Shay’s Dream is about to become a nightmare.

Paired with an unstable cop named Kebar for his liberal use of a short, lethal metal stick called a K-bar, the two unlikely partners become a devastatingly effective force in the war against crime.

But Kebar harbors a dangerous secret he’s sold out to the mob to help his sister. Her rape and beating leaves her in a coma and pushes an already unstable Kebar over the edge. Meanwhile his partner’s own dark secrets threaten to ignite a devastatingly powder keg of lowlifes and corrupt cops while a madman stalks the streets of New York, murdering young women.

Once Were Cops is a poetic carnage of fast-paced, hard-boiled noir set in the corners of New York City few ever see.

Rights to: France/Fayard, UK/Transword-Bantam Press

Cross (St. Martin’s Press, March 2008)

Jack Taylor brings death and pain to everyone he loves. His only hope of redemption – his surrogate son, Cody – is lying in hospital in a coma. At least he still has Ridge, his old friend from the Guards, though theirs is an unorthodox relationship. When she tells him that a boy has been crucified in Galway city, he agrees to help her search for the killer.

Jack’s investigations take him to many of his old haunts where he encounters ghosts, dead and living. Everyone wants something from him, but Jack is not sure he has anything left to give. Maybe he should sell up, pocket his Euros and get the hell out of Galway like everyone else seems to be doing.

Then the sister of the murdered boy is burned to death, and Jack decides he must hunt down the killer, if only to administer his own brand of rough justice.

Praise:

“One has to wonder how much more punishment Bruen can put on poor Taylor before the man cracks up irretrievably. With writing like Ken’s of course – punchy, rhythmic,dark and affecting – we wouldn’t have it any other way.” – Crime Scene Scotland

“Bruen’s writing is as bleak and spare as Taylor’s take on modern Ireland, but you’ll end up as hooked on this series of home-grown, gritty crime stories as Jack Taylor is on alcohol.” -Irish Indepedent

“Cross is vintage Ken Bruen. Clipped prose and mordant humour are coupled to a plot that’s just about as violent as anything he has ever written. Bruen has the uncanny ability to describe the most touching of moments with heart-rending effectiveness and lyrical beauty.” – Mean Streets

Please check out this promo trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ttDOZ0smd8

Priest (UK/Bantam Press-Transworld, 2006]
**Proud winner of the prestigious the 2007 Barry Award**
+++Nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel.

From Publishers Weekly: Starred Review. Recovered from incapacitating guilt over the death of a child on his watch, Jack Taylor is released from the loony bin at the start of Shamus-winner Bruen’s searing fifth book about the alcoholic Galwegian ex-cop (after 2006′s The Dramatist). Jack’s friend Nio “Ridge” Iomaire picks him up from the hospital and mentions the gory headlines: a pedophilic priest, Father Joyce, was beheaded. At the request of another frightened priest, Jack launches an unofficial investigation with the assistance of an eager, younger partner, Cody. All the while fighting his constant ache for a drink, the maverick PI also helps Ridge ward off a stalker. Jack is a keen and literary narrator, and Bruen’s latest Irish noir makes for a kind of savage poetry, at once exhausting and exhilarating. Bruen has been a finalist for Edgar, Anthony and Barry awards. (Mar.)

From Booklist: Jack Taylor has spent the last five months in the loony bin, recovering from the horrific tragedy at the end of The Dramatist (2006). Maybe it’s his new frame of mind–most of his friends are dead or have become his enemies–or maybe it’s something else, but Ireland seems to have become even more foreign to the cranky ex-Guard in that short time. His head is clanging with thoughts about the increasingly commodified Irish soul as he finds himself, barely prepared, sucked into three new cases: finding out who beheaded a child-molesting priest; catching his last remaining friend’s stalker; and locating his missing ex-best friend–the father of the girl who died while Taylor was babysitting her has disappeared into skid row. Dark days, even for Taylor, though he still finds time for ruminations on literature, music, and pop culture. If you like this cup of tea, it’s brewed about the same as the last one. But Bruen, a writer of talent and originality, has yet to push himself to the next level.

From The Critics
Marilyn Stasio – The New York Times: “You can’t expect much in the way of conventional sleuthing from this tormented hero, but there’s music in his lament for the corruption of innocence and the loss of faith — in the government and the clergy — in “the new Ireland,” even as he does battle with the demons that have claimed his own soul.”

Maureen Corrigan – The Washington Post: “Bruen exploits the dark potential of the mystery form to its fullest, using his tale to pose disturbing existential questions only to come up with answers as hollow as Hammett’s Maltese Falcon.”

Rights sold: US/St. Martin’s Press, France/Editions Gallimard, Turkey/Bilge Kultur SanatYayinlari, Holland/ Uitgeverij Verbum (exp: 08/13)

The Dramatist [St. Martin’s Press, 2007]

Rights to: SPAIN/Editional ViaMagma, UK/Transworld-Bantam Press
**Winner of the prestigious the 2007 Shamus Award for best hardcover**

Book description: The impossible has happened: Jack Taylor is living clean and dating a mature woman. Rumour suggests he is even attending mass… The accidental deaths of two students appear random, tragic events, except that in each case a copy of a book by John Millington Synge is found beneath the body. Jack begins to believe that “The Dramatist,” a calculating killer, is out there, enticing him to play. As the case twists and turns Jack’s refuge, the city of Galway, now demands he sacrifice the only love he’s maintained, and while Iraq burns, he seems a step away from the abyss.

PRAISE:

“Ken Bruen is hard to resist, with his aching Irish heart, silvery tongue and bleak noir sensibility—all on display in THE DRAMATIST…. Bruen… writes with extraordinary delicacy about a man driven to acts of violence out of wild grief and a fierce sense of guilt.”
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly: Last seen in Bruen’s The Magdalen Martyrs, Irish detective Jack Taylor is sober and hating it in his stellar fourth outing. Things are looking up for the well-worn detective—at least until the apparently accidental death of the sister of his drug dealer, who’s now in jail. As Taylor pursues the well-read killer in Dublin, he gets involved in the life of an old flame, Ann Henderson, and her abusive husband. A group of shadowy pike-wielding vigilantes adds extra spice to the mix. By now, readers know the Bruen formula of the downward spiral, but there’s no denying the effectiveness of the tough dialogue, the crisp scenes and Taylor’s weary, crumpled-jacket appeal. Nor can many writers in any genre evoke a seedy urban Ireland as well as Bruen. Few, too, can continue to deliver interesting stories and even more interesting character studies. With a riveting mystery and a deftly rendered protagonist, Bruen recaptures the immediacy and the impact of the first two novels in the series.”

“You can practically slice the Irish fatalism with a broken Guinness bottle in The Dramatist, which is redeemed from its near hopelessness by an appealing, Simenon-like economy and by a protagonist who is as wonderfully besotted with the English language as he is with his five cigarettes a day.”
—The Washington Post

Other titles by Ken Bruen, published by Busted Flush Press:
A FIFTH OF BRUEN (May 2006 trade paperback) Shades of Grace (1993) (short novel), Martyrs (1994) (short novel), Funeral: Tales of Irish Morbidities (1992), Sherry: And Other Stories (1994), Time of Serena-May/Upon the Third Cross (1995) All the Old Songs and Nothing to Lose.

The rest of the Jack Taylor Novels:
The Guards (SMP, 2003) Rights: Czech/BB Art
The Killing of the Tinkers (SMP, 2004) Rights to: Czech/BB Art
The Magdalen Martyrs (SMP, 2005)

Stand Alone titles:
Her Last Call to Louis Macneice (1997)
The Hackman Blues (1997)
Rilke on Black (1997)

*Ken Bruen’s work has been translated into: French by Gallimaire Serie Noire & Fayard
Spanish by Tropismos and Editorial via Magma, Russian by U-Factoria & Ripol Classic, Italian by Frassinelli, Japanese by Hayakawa, Danish by Klim, Albanian by Dituria and Czech by BB Art., Dutch by Verbum.

Visit www.KenBruen.com