Jack Taylor: Quite Possibly
The World's Worst Detective
THE DRAMATIST
By Ken Bruen
St. Martin's Minotaur
ISBN 0-312-31647-X
Reviewed by Sharon Greer
Two young women are the latest murder victims in Ken Bruen's most recent Jack Taylor series, The Dramatist.
Taylor's drug dealer, Stewart, is in jail, so Jack is off the drugs, booze and pills in this fourth installment of quite possibly the world's worst detective.
An old friend contacts Jack to ask a favour. She wants him to visit the sordid Mountjoy Prison in Dublin to visit his dealer who has been traumatized by a recent tragedy.
Jack is reluctant but agrees to go see him, only to discover that Stewart's sister Sarah has been murdered and Jack has been asked to investigate. A clue left at the scene of the crime under Sarah's body, is a copy of The Collected Plays and Poems of J.M. Synge.
Two words are written in black ink on the title page: THE DRAMATIST. What is the murderer trying to convey?
After visiting a woman friend one evening, Jack is kidnapped by a band of vigilantes fashioning themselves after the Pikemen. Bruen manages to cleverly incorporate the 1798 Rebellion and the use of pikes into the narrative.
The Wexford Pikemen fought the despised Yeomen in the Rebellion with the formidable pike. They were easier to use than a musket or bayonet. Originally the handle was about six feet long with a six inch spearhead - a deadly weapon.
These modern day "pikemen" want Jack to join them in their virulent crusade to "rid the streets of evil." Jack Taylor is not impressed.
To make matters worse, Jack runs into his old flame, Ann Henderson, who has just recently married a brutal Irish policeman, Tim Coffey. Coffey likes to leave his mark all over Ann's face.
When Taylor sees her sitting in a café one day, he decides to approach her but is heartbroken when he notices bruising on her left cheekbone. When Coffey discovers Ann has seen Jack, his insane jealousy kicks in and he sets up a lethal trap for Taylor which leaves him with a limp. When Coffey turns up dead with his skull caved in Jack is the number one suspect.
His strained relationship with his mother is rapidly deteriorating. Dementia has set in after her stroke and Jack finds out she has ended up in a horrendous nursing home. Just when he is ready to move her to a better place, she dies, leaving behind one guilt-ridden son.
But Jack Taylor's failures as a human being are what makes him so endearing to his readers. And Ken Bruen manages to leave us dangling yet again at the end of another scorching Jack Taylor adventure.
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