GALWAY CONFIDENTIAL

Galway private eye Jack Taylor awakens from an 18-month coma to a raging pandemic, two serial felons, and a most unexpected savior.

Jack doesn’t know the man who calls himself Raftery, but the former U.S. Marine, who’s taken time out from his podcast, Galway Confidential, to visit Jack every day since rescuing him from a knife-wielding attacker, is at his side when he comes around. The rest of their city isn’t doing so well. A pair of sadistic teenagers are dousing the city’s plentiful street people with lighter fluid and setting them on fire, and some unrelated party has been beating local nuns badly enough to send them to the hospital and seems likely to send the next round of victims to the morgue. Geary, an old friend of Jack’s who lives on the streets, tries to hire him to investigate the attacks on all those other homeless souls, but then he becomes the next victim. And ex-nun Sheila Winston, who guilts Jack into investigating all those wounded religious, ends up strangled with her own rosary. As usual with Bruen, the mystery is mainly an excuse for an unblinkered tour of the local lowlifes, its focus strategically blurred by shots of Jameson whiskey and throwaway apothegms referencing its title (e.g., “Keeping something confidential in Galway means you only tell two people instead of three”). And they’re well worth touring, especially when they’re set against the headline developments in world affairs that occasionally penetrate Jack’s haze.

The raffish hero’s world feels like an unusually sordid theme park attraction. Just be sure to wipe your hands when you exit.