No one writes like Ken Bruen. He makes his own rules, breaks established ones, and then rewrites his own. I have read all of his books, including the newly published THE GHOSTS OF GALWAY, with my hands over my eyes, peeping, afraid of what I was about to read next. When I started his latest, I thought, Please, please, don’t xxxx xxx xxx. He did. Such is the man’s talent that when he did “xxxx xxx xxx,” it was totally unexpected.

Do you remember how your parents taught you to cross the street? You wait until a car passes, look left, look right, then look left again and cross. That wouldn’t help you in a Ken Bruen book. You would go through the motions, start to cross, and then the car that passes would roll up on you in reverse and come back again just for grins and giggles. Bruen, in other words, writes what is real.

"Does THE GHOSTS OF GALWAY sound like fun? It is not. But it is brilliantly and darkly told, a sweet mother’s milk that is terminally poisonous but nearly irresistible after one taste."

Jack Taylor is Bruen’s defrocked garda, a rough, drunken angel of Galway who still maintains the frock in the form of the coat that he refuses to turn in despite multiple requests. Over the course of more than a dozen books, Jack has been spiraling lower and lower. It’s best --- and a test of stamina --- to start at the beginning of the series, but if you pick up THE GHOSTS OF GALWAY as a Bruen virgin, you will find your way through to the end by following the breadcrumbs of the past that Bruen has so carefully lain with casual aplomb. You also will find a list of literary and musical references and recommendations peppered throughout the book.

Jack is retained by a loathsome individual tied to the Ukrainian mob to appropriate The Red Book, which is reputed to be the first true book of heresy, from the hands of a defrocked priest. The money that his erstwhile patron offers is too good to pass up, and, given that he is recuperating from a near-fatal illness as well as a failed suicide attempt, he reluctantly takes the job. Jack gets put at cross purposes with the ghosts of his present and past in the form of new and old flames, but whether either or both will make it to the end is anyone’s guess. He also makes new enemies and antagonizes old ones while doing the same with scars of his own and others. Then, of course, there are the ghosts of Galway, who haunt his sleeping and waking hours, waiting for him to join them. It doesn’t seem at any point in this disturbing work that they will be waiting for long.

Does THE GHOSTS OF GALWAY sound like fun? It is not. But it is brilliantly and darkly told, a sweet mother’s milk that is terminally poisonous but nearly irresistible after one taste. It does not take an especially long time to read, but should be lingered over. Once you are finished, you will want to visit or revisit its predecessors, as the case may be, in order to prepare yourself for the next installment. But be ready to have your skull fractured and your heart broken.