The Jack Taylor Novels

Still stinging from his unceremonious ouster from the Garda Siochana, and staring at the world through the smoky bottom of his beer mug, Jack Taylor is stuck in Galway with nothing to look forward to. He is teetering on the brink of his life's sharpest edges, his memories of the past cutting deep into his soul and his prospects for the future non-existent.

Jack Taylor, a disgraced ex-cop in Galway, has slid further down the slope of despair. After a year in London he returns to his home town of Galway with a leather coat and a coke habit. Someone is systematically slaughtering young travellers and dumping their bodies in the city centre. Even in the state he's in, Jack Taylor has an uncanny ability to know where to look, what questions to ask, and with the aid of an English policeman, apparently solves the case.

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.

Evil has many guises and Jack Taylor has encountered most of them, and has the scars to prove it. But nothing before has ever truly terrified him until he confronts an evil coterie named Headstone, who have committed a series of random, insane, violent crimes in Galway, Ireland that leave even the national police shaken. And Jack is especially vulnerable now that he has finally found love and happiness.

Jack Taylor thinks he has a chance at last to rest and heal from the myriad mental and physical traumas that beset him. However, after a skateboarder long suspected of dealing drugs to children is shot dead in mid-air during a public performance, Jack receives a cryptic message with a picture of the skateboarder, a clipping about a rapist gone free through procedural error, and a chilling invitation: "Your turn." The note is signed simply "C 33."

As well-versed in politics, pop culture, and crime fiction as he is ill-fated in life, Jack Taylor is recovering from a mistaken medical diagnosis and a failed suicide attempt. In need of money - and with former cop on his resume - Jack has been hired as a night-shift security guard. But his Ukrainian boss has Jack in mind for a bit of off-the-books work. He wants Jack to find what some claim to be the first true book of heresy, The Red Book, which is currently in the possession of a rogue priest who is hiding out in Galway after fleeing the Vatican.

Jack Taylor still knocks back too much Jameson and dabbles in uppers, but he has a new woman in his life, a freshly bought apartment, and little sign of trouble on the horizon. Once again, trouble comes to him - this time in the form of a wealthy Frenchman who wants Jack to investigate the double-murder of his twin sons. Jack is meanwhile roped into looking after his girlfriend's nine-year-old son and is in for a shock with the appearance of a character out of his past. The plot is one big chess game, and all of the pieces seem to be moving at the behest of one dangerously mysterious player, a vigilante called "Silence"....

Ex-cop-turned-PI Jack Taylor has finally escaped the despair of his violent life in Galway in favor of quiet retirement in the country with his friend Keefer, a former Rolling Stones roadie, and a falcon named Maeve. But on a day trip back into the city to sort out his affairs, Jack is hit by a truck in front of Galway’s Famine Memorial and left in a coma - but mysteriously without a scratch on him. When he awakens weeks later, he finds Ireland in a frenzy over the so-called “Miracle of Galway”.

When Jack Taylor awakes from a coma following an attack that left him in hospital, much of the world has changed. The Covid pandemic has devastated the lives of many in his beloved city of Galway and beyond. As Jack tries to absorb the incredible changes, a woman approaches him with a particularly distressing case. Two local nuns have been bludgeoned by a mysterious man wielding a hammer. As the police fail to act while the violence against the Sisters escalates, Jack seems like their only hope.