the DramatistThe Drama­tist by Ken Bruen (St. Martin’s Press 2007) is the fourth mys­tery fea­tur­ing ex-Garda Síochána Jack Tay­lor. The sto­ries are told through first per­son nar­ra­tive and are set in Gal­way, Ireland.

Jack Tay­lor is your typ­i­cal alco­holic PI with all the usual hang-ups that go with that label. Low self-esteem (check), very arro­gant (check), had a crappy child­hood (check plus) and lastly, he’s a loner. In any event, he was kicked off the police force because of his drink­ing and now makes his liv­ing as a pri­vate investigator.

Jack doesn’t adver­tise his PI ser­vices. Mostly, peo­ple come to him first know­ing that he was once a Guard and that he might still have con­nec­tions. Typ­i­cally he’s broke, has a small cir­cle of friends and stays in a hotel but lives at the local bar. But since his drug dealer was put in jail, Jack’s had to sober up.

In this entry, Jack’s asked to inves­ti­gate the death of a stu­dent who was found at the bot­tom of some stairs with her neck bro­ken. Beside the body, there’s a book of col­lected poems and plays and within it, a sig­na­ture in black ink that reads, “the Drama­tist” on the title page.

The story then branches off into another side arc where Jack is asked to do a favor for a friend that brings him face to face with one of Ireland’s most feared, urban myths — the Pike­men. They are sup­pos­edly a secret group of vig­i­lantes still oper­at­ing and still going strong despite some who don’t believe they actu­ally exist.

On the per­sonal front, Jack’s mother has suf­fered a stroke. The two were estranged before she fell ill. She’s placed in a nurs­ing home that is described as being appallingly bad. Jack’s guilt rid­den because he finds him­self unable to afford any­thing bet­ter for her. Added to that, he gets per­son­ally involved in the life of an old girl­friend that leads to dis­as­trous results.

I will forgo the rest of the plot and tell you how I liked this story. I liked it. Almost all of Bruen’s books in this series are fast reads for me. What I like about this series is the cases that Jack is asked to solve because they are never all that easy. I also like the tid­bits of his­tory of Ireland’s cul­ture and customs.

The world-weary hero is the main draw for me. You see, I like dark, angst rid­den char­ac­ters and Jack fits the bill nicely. He’s had all kinds of bad stuff done to him. He has his moments of wry humor and can be defen­sive and sar­cas­tic on occa­sion. Shows a bit of arro­gance and tem­per along with some humor. He’s had his share of roman­tic rela­tion­ships but they usu­ally go nowhere.

So far this is an enjoy­able series. I like the moral issues that Jack some­times has to con­front and the end­ing in here was a shocker. Typ­i­cal Bruen, leav­ing the reader want­ing more after the last scene he wrote in here. Of course, I can’t tell you what was so shock­ing about it but will say that it was enough to knock Jack back off the wagon again. Espe­cially after he was doing so well at chang­ing his life for the bet­ter, too. B.

As for the writ­ing, here’s a brief sam­ple of Jack’s humor:

For a brief moment I’d been think­ing I’d ask her out; now I thought she needed lock­ing up.

Here’s Jack on the world’s events,

Robin Cook had resigned from Blair’s gov­ern­ment. Sad­dam Hus­sein had been given seventy-two hours to leave Iran. The sec­ond UN res­o­lu­tion was no longer rel­e­vant. War was com­ing, lethal and soon.

For read­ers inter­ested in the Jack Tay­lor series, the first book is The Guards. I can’t really com­pare Ken Bruen to any­one else because he has a style that is unique to him. His sto­ries are inter­est­ing and the tone of the sto­ries can some­times be bleak and somber. It’s Irish noir at it’s finest.