JACK TAYLOR NOVELS Priest The Dramatist The Magdalen Martyrs The Killing of the Tinkers The Guards BRANT NOVELS Calibre Vixen Blitz The McDead Taming the Alien A White Arrest CRIME NOVELS American Skin Dispatching Baudelaire London Boulevard Her Last Call to Louis Macneice The Hackman Blues Rilke on Black THE DRAMATIST UK The impossible has happened: Jack Taylor is living clean and dating a mature woman. Rumour suggests he is even attending mass... The accidental deaths of two students appear random, tragic events, except that in each case a copy of a book by John Millington Synge is found beneath the body. Jack begins to believe that "The Dramatist," a calculating killer, is out there, enticing him to play. As the case twists and turns Jack's refuge, the city of Galway, now demands he sacrifice the only love he's maintained, and while Iraq burns, he seems a step away from the abyss. Buy the book from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or an independent bookstore. PRAISE US "Ken Bruen is hard to resist, with his aching Irish heart, silvery tongue and bleak noir sensibility—all on display in THE DRAMATIST.... Bruen... writes with extraordinary delicacy about a man driven to acts of violence out of wild grief and a fierce sense of guilt."    —The New York Times "Another raw and witty winner."    —TorontoSun.com "Last seen in Bruen's The Magdalen Martyrs, Irish detective Jack Taylor is sober and hating it in his stellar fourth outing. Things are looking up for the well-worn detective—at least until the apparently accidental death of the sister of his drug dealer, who's now in jail. As Taylor pursues the well-read killer in Dublin, he gets involved in the life of an old flame, Ann Henderson, and her abusive husband. A group of shadowy pike-wielding vigilantes adds extra spice to the mix. By now, readers know the Bruen formula of the downward spiral, but there's no denying the effectiveness of the tough dialogue, the crisp scenes and Taylor's weary, crumpled-jacket appeal. Nor can many writers in any genre evoke a seedy urban Ireland as well as Bruen. Few, too, can continue to deliver interesting stories and even more interesting character studies. With a riveting mystery and a deftly rendered protagonist, Bruen recaptures the immediacy and the impact of the first two novels in the series."    —Publishers Weekly "You can practically slice the Irish fatalism with a broken Guinness bottle in The Dramatist, which is redeemed from its near hopelessness by an appealing, Simenon-like economy and by a protagonist who is as wonderfully besotted with the English language as he is with his five cigarettes a day."    —The Washington Post "If you haven't heard of Ken Bruen or haven't read him yet I'd have to ask what rock you've been under. Bruen has taken the US by storm and there is a very good reason... [he] is simply amazing. His books go beyond crime fiction and cut to the core of what it is to be human. All too human with all the baggage included. His protagonist Jack Taylor, in this his fourth in the series, shows all too well. Bruen's writing is soul tearing and gut wrenching. It is sparse and fulfilling. It's noir poetry with blues in the background and a whiskey chaser. It's also great reading."    —Jon Jordan, Crimespree Magazine "Signature Irish noir, dark as it gets."    —MonstersandCritics.com "Hurrah, the fourth Jack Taylor book arrives from Edgar-nominated Ken Bruen, the man from Galway. This book will secure the growing reputation of this amazing writer, who can blend the darkest situation with a wisecrack that provides the perception that links life with death. The key to this and Bruen's previous work is the slow pace that gathers momentum as the tale is told. The dialogue is priceless and his wit as sardonic and cynical as one could wish for. The plotting is loose as Ken Bruen goes about seeing the world through Jack Taylor's weary eyes, commenting on the changes in the world and in Ireland, but by heck is the ending tremendous. If you haven't discovered Bruen, it's time you did."    —Ali Karim "Reading Ken Bruen, as anyone who ever has will tell you, is like playing with fire; you know that your feelings, your emotions and your sensibilities are apt to get burned, but you just can't resist the almost primal allure of the heat and flame. Well, reading THE DRAMATIST, the author's fourth novel featuring alcoholic ex-Guard Jack Taylor, will make cauterizing a raw nerve with a blow torch seem like a pleasant diversion. With Bruen's trademark terse prose, dialogue as hard as Connemara marble and as sharp as an icy wind off the Irish Sea, this one will - to borrow a line from James Ellroy - leave you "reamed, steamed and dry-cleaned." And that's all before you get to the absolutely horrific and unspeakable denouement on the novel's penultimate page. All that yawns ahead of Jack Taylor at the end of this incandescent work is utter darkness and it seems impossible to conceive of a way whereby even he - the ultimate "survivor" - might find his way back into the light..."    —James Clar, Mystery News