reviewed by Donna Moore

The Dramatist

Jack Taylor has exchanged the booze and the drugs for Lemsip and Greek yoghurt. He's been clean and sober for 6 months, and he's even started attending mass. Things are looking up. Well, this is Jack Taylor we're talking about. It's not long before the seemingly welcoming light at the end of the tunnel starts to look as though it's going to turn out to be a large, speeding train, going to hell without any brakes. You can be sure that Jack's many demons will be waiting at the gates, vying for his attention with open arms. And, as if things aren't bad enough, his prized leather coat gets nicked. At Mass.

He reluctantly goes to visit his ex drug-dealer, Stewart, in jail and is persuaded to look into the death of Stewart's sister, who was found at the foot of her stairs, her neck broken in an apparent accident. Then another student dies in a seemingly unrelated tragedy. Jack is drawn into the case despite himself, while trying to cling on to his newfound sobriety and finally build some sort of relationship with his sick mother.

This is the fourth entry in the Jack Taylor series and is the darkest and most powerful so far. Things have always happened around Jack, he's always been the focus, and often the cause of mayhem, but in The Dramatist everything seems more malevolent, more personal, more painful. Giving up some of his vices has made Jack a darker person as memories that have been drowned with alcohol for years now come back into his mind. It's easy to see why he took refuge in the drink and the drugs in the first place. At least he can rely on them to blot out things that no-one should have to deal with.

The Dramatist is noir crime fiction at its best. The book is dark, while also being very funny. It's moving, touching, wonderful, ferocious, heartbreaking, original. Ken Bruen presents Jack Taylor in an open and honest way, as though to say 'here's the man—make up your own minds'. For those of us who care about him, we embrace him wholeheartedly—warts and all.  He feels real and human and full of depth.  As a result, Jack can make me laugh or cry, and things that happen to him can tear me apart. And torn apart I was. The Dramatist is an unforgettable book that makes itself part of your soul.

Vixen

DS Brant is back and this time he has a new woman in his life. However, it's not a new romance. Instead she's a particularly nasty killer, and part of a gang setting off bombs in order to extort money from the authorities. Unfortunately, the timing of their first bomb is a little out, and it goes off while the blackmailer is on the phone to Brixton nick. On the plus side, as the extortionist says:
"...the movie playing at The Paradise was a Tom Cruise piece of shit so we kind of did the public a service."

And it's not as though Brixton's finest don't have their own problems to deal with. WPC Falls has failed the sergeant's exam again and is drinking rather too much, Porter Nash is having health problems and Chief Inspector Roberts is going to get it in the neck if he doesn't catch the extortionists before they blow up half of London. As for DS Brant...well, it's brutal business as usual for the chauvinistic, brash policeman. He has a favour to do for a prostitute. Since it involves violence, it's something he does with great relish.

Ken Bruen's characterisation is excellent, and one of his great skills lies in the fact that he can take characters who are, on the face of it, pretty unlikeable, and make you care what happens to them.

The narrative is swift and spare, dialogue driven and with not a word wasted. Noir, unsentimental and uncompromising, the in-your-face violence and humour mix on the page in a way that really shouldn't work but does. There's nobody better than Ken Bruen at brutal and funny. And he does it with such memorable style.

After finishing a Ken Bruen book I always feel as though all my organs have been ripped out and left in a pulsating heap on the floor. But in a good way.

Copyright© 2004 Donna Moore

DONNA MOORE was born in 1962 and led a sheltered childhood in a small English village. A crime fiction fan from a young age, Donna wanted to be one of Enid Blyton's Famous Five and fight crime with the aid of only a basket of cucumber sandwiches and a bottle of ginger beer. She spent her spare time following mysterious strangers around the village—especially those with cockney accents and a couple of days' growth of stubble—until a complaint from the new local vicar put a stop to her sleuthing career. Her crime writing career will kick off next year with ...GO TO HELENA HANDBASKET.
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