Headstone by Ken Bruen

Rest easy, children. Jack Taylor is watching out for you.

Brine has threatened, intimidated, and manipulated some mates in boarding school to be his followers - members of Headstone. And he has a goth girl for a lover. On a mission. Make history. Have movie made about him. Get on Oprah. Never be forgotten. They start out with an assault on an old priest. Then they kill a Down's child. Other killings and maulings happen around Galway and The Guard thinks they are random. Jack, his sort of friend and ex-con Stewart and former Guard partner Ridge (the lesbian who married to a schmuck rich boy in need of arm candy) think otherwise because each have received a little gift in the mail. About the size of a deck of cards, they get their very own headstone.

Jack continues to fight his personal demons of his past as well as his inability at keeping any friendships ("We were never going to be friends, Jack, and you know I doubt we ever were."). His diet has the 4 major food groups (Jameson, cigarettes, black coffee, Xanax) to help with with 4-5 side stories. Like a creepy priest dressed in an Armani stole who represents a shadowy group inside the church trying to dress up the church's image with "smooth lies of an insincere priest." He hires Jack to find a renegade priest who supposedly ran off with The Brethren's money. Or Kosta, a crime boss who is indebted to Jack (from an earlier book) and will do anything for Jack, but expects the same in return.

Ridge is the victim of a anti-lesbian attack. Jack is assaulted, beaten, and tortured ending up in the hospital . . . minus two fingers. He asks Kosta for weapons. Sets up Stewart as bait. Then kidnaps the goth, applies his own torture to find out what Bine's plan is. So he and Stewart head out, armed to the teeth and scared shitless ("I'm bad tempered naturally. Fear makes me dangerous"). But afterward, Jack is wracked with some measure of guilt and heads for the bottles (Jameson and Xanax) looking for some solace because "they haven't invented the drink that wipes the slate clean of utter treachery."

Bruen liberally spices his books with current book, music, and movie references and this one Taylor suggests that Ridge take up some fiction and suggests a MRB fav - James Lee Burke. Smart guy. I've read a bunch of Bruen. Right now, I'd say this is my #2 favorite of his books.

Jack may limp and have to wear a hearing aid. But be glad he's on the case. When he's done, you are clean and Jack carries away your guilt and pain, when he does, "Elvis hadn't so much as left they building as stormed out with murder aforethought."

East Coast Don