GALWAY'S EDGE

Private eye Jack Taylor goes up against the Galway chapter of the criminal combine Edge. And there’s much, much more.

Burly Father Richard, special envoy (read: hatchet man) from the Vatican, tells Jack that St. Joseph’s parish priest, Father Kevin Whelan, is one of the movers and shakers in the local Edge, which has most recently killed a pedophile named Cleon, and that he needs to be neutralized. Although his diagnosis is correct, his prescription misses the mark, because someone hangs Father Kevin in his backyard before Jack can do anything. And he’s not the only Edge member marked for death by hedge fund millionaire George Benson, who seems resolved to take over the local chapter and push it in a new direction. When Therese, the local Mother Superior, asks Jack to recover a jeweled crucifix that’s been stolen, he goes to meet Benson, the presumed thief, in his office, asks him to return it, and gets thrown out for his trouble. In between times, a beaten wife whose husband breaks Jack’s nose when Jack confronts him ends up sorry she ever approached him. So does Jordan, the thief Jack persuades to break into Benson’s place and recover that cross. Benson’s beefy head of security pays a visit to Jack’s apartment to threaten him. A new client who’s been diagnosed with cancer hires Jack to kill him on his birthday. Mother Therese asks Jack to find out who’s been leaving dead cats at the nunnery door. And so on and on, with even the most important of these individual crimes and conflicts subordinated to the gently manic music of them all.

A shaggy, wonderfully evocative lineup for a hero whose “modus operandi [is] to retaliate first.”