Irish crime fiction novelist Ken Bruen writes with a terse, almost clipped prose style very different from his equally eloquent but longer- winded UK contemporaries such as P.D. James or Ian Rankin. Instead of lengthy descriptive passages about place and character, Bruen's sparse style allows the reader's imagination to fill in the spaces between his sentences, and considering the bleakness of his stories, it's an effective ploy.
      In his latest novel, (third in a series) The Magdalen Martyrs, Bruen's protagonist, an alcoholic, drug-addled former policeman in Galway named Jack Taylor, who survives by being a quasi private investigator - no office, no staff -- takes on two unrelated clients. One, a local mobster, Bill Cassell, asks Taylor to track down Rita Monroe, a woman who had worked in the infamous Magdalen Laundry, where supposedly "wayward" girls were sent by their parents and the Church to do a most brutal penance (a chilling recent film, The Magdalen Sisters, dealt with this real life setting). Cassell tells Taylor that Monroe had been kind to his mother while she was forced to live at the Laundry as a young woman, and now, after his mother's death, he wants to thank her.
      The second client, a haughty young man named Terence, asks Taylor to find evidence that will show that his father has been cleverly murdered by his young stepmother.
      Just getting through the day is an ordeal for Taylor. As a cop and then a private investigator, he's left a trail of tragedy in his boozy wake: "I feel the guilt and recriminations still. The line of dead who accuse me at every turn of sleep, they come in silent dread, the eyes fixed on me as I twist and moan in vain hope of escape. So I drink. I'm way past my sell-by date and am on precious borrowed time. I should have gone down a long time ago. Lots of days, I wish I had."
      But Taylor, despite operating drunk or drugged, or both, is a dogged investigator. His search for Rita Monroe brings the cruel past of the Magdalen laundry to light (it was finally shut down in the 60s) and it slowly dawns on Taylor that he's being used by Cassell to further an evil agenda. The young stepmother of Toby proves to be a classic "black widow" in the finest noir tradition, and Taylor icily finds a way to destroy her malevolent intentions.
      Even with an alcoholic's penchant for violence and manipulation, Jack Taylor is a deeply compassionate man with a strong sense of humanity and justice. Bruen, who never wastes a word, combines a superb crime novel with a serious cautionary tale, told with unnerving, crystalline precision. Copyright © 1998-2008 Peter Handel, All Rights Reserved.