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The Killing of the Tinkers (Brandon Originals)
 
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The Killing of the Tinkers (Brandon Originals) (Paperback)

by Ken Bruen (Author)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Brandon (1 May 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0863222943
  • ISBN-13: 978-0863222948
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 13 x 2.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 530,820 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

The Big Issue

Irish writer Ken Bruen is the finest purveyor of intelligent Brit-noir.

Sunday Tribune

There is something strangely compulsive about turning the pages of The Killing of the Tinkers, Bruen’s twelfth novel.
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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars ..it leaps off every page ! ......, 30 May 2002
The Killing of the Tinkers is two hundred and fifty-three pages of the best dialogue I have ever read. Believable, in-your-face, and real; you are there, sitting across the table, eavesdropping at the next bar stool. It leaps off every page and makes you part of Jack Taylor's world. The reviews of Ken's work tend to focus on the dark side. But that's not all that captured me. I was grabbed from the first sentence of the first page by the self-destructive soul of Jack Taylor; a soul that could only be cauterized by alcohol and cocaine. Yes, that's dark. But it's too narrow an assessment. If you have a dark side ( and how many of us have, if we're honest) you will find a memory or two in the lost evenings and anguished mornings of Jack Taylor. But where there is dark, there must also be light. And that light is there, perhaps dim at times, but it's there. It's there in the women who love him, in the people who still trust him, in the friends who care for him, in himself too: his ability to pick himself up again, his sense of justice, his attempts to find and punish the evil ones. There's the humour too, always there, black humour maybe, but it's the fabric that saves Jack Taylor and the people who populate Ken Bruen's Galway from absolute despair. Yes, Jack Taylor finds his anaesthetic in cocaine and alcohol. But he also finds it in books. It seems at times that he could just as easily be tempted into Charlie Byrne's as into his local pub. If you love to read (and I suspect you wouldn't be reading this unless you do) you'll be able to 'stack' Jack Taylor's selections on your own book shelves as you get lost in this dark trek through the netherworld of Galway.

But you also get to travel the streets and meet the people of the real Galway, from Forster Street to Hidden Valley, from Vinny in Charlie Byrnes to Declan in Zhivago's. Maybe Ken Bruen is doing for Galway in The Killing of the Tinkers what Joyce did for Dublin in Ulysses: giving us a map of a Galway that is rapidly disappearing under the paws of the Celtic Tiger.

That's it. Buy the book, tell your friends, buy some more................

And next time you see me absorbed, intoxicated, in the shelves of your favourite bookstore in Galway, you know I'll be sampling the sources of my drugs. ....Jack Higgins, James Patterson, Jeffery Deaver, Ken Follett, James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly and Ken Bruen..... .........

Pat Mullan
May, 2002.

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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Im Unsure..., 25 Aug 2005
By Sweary "Sweary" (Cork, Ireland) - See all my reviews
There is something compelling about this book; that the hero is flawed beyond what some authors would chance for their characters, that the story is pacy, and punchy. I suppose my major gripe is Bruen's writing. To my mind, portraying a world where the characters are fighting for time doesn't necessarily mean leaving out half the words... I've heard of editing, but this is ridiculous! It's as if the author, in trying to create an in-your-face protagonist and some snappy dialogue, ended up with a narrative voice bundled with every conceivable noir clichè. It gets extremely irritating:
"Went out. Bought cigarettes. Malboros. Had pint"
At times it's like some sort of delusional diary.
Very black and white in its characterisation too... like I said, I'm in two minds. While I admire the author for not flinching away from exploring the darker side of human nature, I want to hit him over the head with the Oxford dictionary.
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