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Jack Taylor Geht Zum Teufel (2012)

by Ken Bruen(Favorite Author)

3.81 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

3855350515 (ISBN13: 9783855350513)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Atrium Verlag

series

Jack Taylor

review 1: All of Ken Bruen's books featuring Galway private investigator Jack Taylor are a joy to read, because they are entertaining, brief and written in a breezy Elmore Leonard-style that is a mash-up of noir and Irish verse, with the names and lyrics of Irish and American rock stars name dropped. But the Devil is not only in the details of this Bruen novel, but serves to move the plot along. Of the four Taylor novels, I have read, this is the least compelling in the batch, because it's the most contrived. Unfortunately, the attempt to add a little Stephen Vincent Benet (The Devil and Daniel Webster) and a few Twilight Zone twists to the book are a bit of a letdown to the reader. Because you see what is coming even before the Devil's horns turn the corner. This is a book that ... moreis more clever in concept, than in its execution.
review 2: This was the Jack Taylor novel on the library shelf when I went looking. I might have done better to leave it there. To jump ahead to this departure without journeying through all the preceding instalments after The Guards (which I very much enjoyed) didn't really work. It may never have done, but I'm comparing with my experience of reading Christopher Brookmyre's own foray into the demonic Pandemonium. That passed muster... but not only had I read a lot more of Brookmyre's preceding novels but there was more of a context for the introduction of non-human evils, and a human context at that. The answer may lie in the different traditions in which Bruen (pure Irish Catholicism) and Brookmyre (the more complex blend of Scottish Protestantism/Catholicism) are rooted. Ill equipped for a leap of faith, I did not make it.Not only that but I feel somewhat soured by the plethora of semi-spoilers for earlier novels which I think I would still enjoy (but would have enjoyed more without this). Understandable and relevant though it is in the context of the story, it just became rather dull to find Jack back in the grip of his various substance abuses.I do enjoy Bruen's writing style (at least partly I am afraid to say because it allows me to read without my specs) and I was intrigued by the device he uses several times of backtracking on the story. I can't decide whether it was laziness or clever. There's really not much plot to this, it plods relentlessly towards a conclusion that we know can never be *the* conclusion. The feeling I am left with after reading it is rather like the way I felt after watching Angelheart many years ago - that it was all very stylish but that I hadn't really given my informed consent and would probably not have. less

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