There's a reason I love Ken Bruen's work. He's absolutely brutal, emotionally draining, and never lacking for real insight into human misery. In "Priest", he unflinchingly explores the psyche of a man on the very precipice.
Still reeling from the shattering events of “The Dramatist”, Jack Taylor is back in Galway, trying to stay sober, trying to get a handle on his rage and despair. He’s asked to investigate the horrifying decapitation of a priest, and the investigation takes his already fragile psyche through an emotional wasteland of abuse, guilt, and vengeance.
Bruen is never afraid to ask the difficult questions in his books; what makes each Jack Taylor story so emotionally grueling is that he’s also not afraid to admit there are no easy answers to human suffering. While Jack may be the author of his own misery, even when he works to get his world back in order fate has a way of pulling the rug out from under him. Jack is aging, and it seems all his roosters are coming home to roost. Rarely have I felt such sympathy for a protagonist.
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