‘Galway Confidential’ by Ken Bruen

Published by Head of Zeus,
27 March 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-03590988-9 (HB)

Galway Confidential is the 19th (and penultimate – the author died in March this year) of Ken Bruen’s gritty novels featuring Jack Taylor. Ex garda and now private detective. Taylor has spent 18 months in a coma during the Covid pandemic following a violent assault. He wakes to find a new world, although his tendency towards copious amounts of whiskey remains unchanged: before he is discharged a doctor says ‘It would be beyond madness to give a revived patient alcohol,’ but that has no effect. Before he knows it, Taylor is asked to investigate a series of attacks on nuns committed by a hammer-wielding maniac (‘some psycho is attacking nuns,’ as Taylor puts it). It doesn’t help that one or two nuns take no notice of advice that they shouldn’t leave the convent alone. The Garda appear to be dragging their heels, and Taylor is on his own. Before long the plot is complicated by a couple of teenagers who delight in setting fire to the alcoholic homeless. A friend meets his maker in this way, and Taylor decides the best way to trap the youngsters is to act as a wino himself. This leads to more problems and a further stay in hospital. Another old friend of Taylor is murdered. Father Pat, a dipsomaniac priest, hovers around the fringes, as does an apparently suave solicitor.

There are a number of other themes. A central part of the mystery concerns someone called Raftery, who apparently saved Taylor’s life during the attack which led to his coma and who spends time at Taylor’s bedside. Who exactly is he?

Galway Confidential is a podcast which appears to be giving help to Taylor’s investigation but then turns out to be not what it seems. Taylor discovers the identity of the killer well before the end of the story, and it is then a question of ensnarement. One or two other characters become involved as the investigation speeds up towards the end, and we have to work out their motives and honesty. The end comes quickly, and quite violently, with a question left hanging in the air to tantalize us. Irish Noir it certainly is.

If you’ve read any of the earlier books in the series, as I confess I have not, you will be prepared for the pared-back style which I was warned about by our Mystery People leader as she handed the novel over to me. Not a word is wasted. To say Bruen’s style is pithy is something of an understatement, but this helps to carry the story in a very speedy manner. There are many references to contemporary events which give the novel even more vibrancy: Covid is the obvious one, but the attack on Salman Rushdie in New York, the FBI raid on Trump’s house, refugees from Ukraine, a Tory MP watching porn in the House, Monkey Pox, Boris Johnson’s resignation and the death of Queen Elizabeth I are amongst the others. Bon mots appear between sections. Sometimes these are quotations (Edna O’Brien, for instance), others are disembodied comments on proceedings.

If you’ve read Bruen before, I imagine you will be keen to read Galway Confidential. If like me you have not, I urge you to discover a genuinely individual voice in crime fiction. It is difficult not to warm to the irreverence of an investigator who can observe that ‘I was up to my arse in nuns’.

 PS Perhaps it’s worth quoting the lines from Edna O’Brien on page 45:

 “When anyone asks me about the Irish character,

I say,

‘Look at the trees.
Maimed,
Stark
and
Misshapen,

But
Ferociously tenacious.'

------
Reviewer: David Whittle

Ken Bruen was born 3 January 1951 in Galway, Republic of Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin.  He spent 25 years as a teacher in Africa, Japan, SE Asia & South America. An unscheduled stint in a Brazilian prison, where he suffered physical & mental abuse, spurred him to write. After a brief spell teaching in London, he returned to Ireland. He died in 2025.  

David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin, about whom he gives talks now and then. He is currently convenor of the East Midlands Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association.