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PRIEST by Ken Bruen (A Review)
Pimpin’ for Ken Bruen!
The fifth “Jack Taylor” novel just released in the UK
Priest by Ken Bruen
Bantam ₤10.99
ISBN 0593055101
January 2006
“’Do you believe in evil, Jack’?
I looked round to see if we could be heard but no one was paying any attention so I said
‘I’ve seen it first hand’
He turned to face me, said
‘Yes, you have and did it burn you’?
I told the truth, went
'It still does’.
He said
‘I was in attendance at an exorcism once’.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear about that, I had enough demons to carry without getting first hand testimony on them. He was quiet and then said
‘You surprise me Jack, most people would be full of curiosity’.
I took a fair hefty wallop of my drink and it scalded my throat, the point of the exercise and then I measured my words, tried
‘The thing is, if I ask you something, can I live with the answer’?
His face creased in a smile of genuine delight and he said
‘What a wonderful reply. You could be a metaphysician'.”
Priest, the fifth incandescent Jack Taylor novel by Ken Bruen, is as dark and unsettling as anything the author has ever written. This is a novel that will, shock, repulse, make you laugh out loud and bring you (literally) to the verge of tears. Like some mad, virtuoso genius laying down a killer jazz riff on a pipe organ, Bruen pulls out all the stops in the pages of this book and you’ll love every exquisite, tortuous minute of it. Bruen once told me that his Jack Taylor novels were “all I know of heaven and hell … [they] … are me soul gouged out of torment” (see http://journals.aol.com/jcc55883/TheMeanStreets/entries/685). Well, in Priest, Bruen continues to exorcise his own personal demons through the craft of writing while, at the same time, subjecting Jack (and, vicariously, his readers) to the torments of the damned. There’s a catharsis for all concerned at the end of this novel but, rest assured, it’s not all what you may have anticipated.
As the novel opens, ex-Guard Jack Taylor is released clean and sober from months in a psychiatric hospital. Still reeling from the tragic death of young Serena May at the end of The Dramatist, Taylor hears time’s “winged chariot” at his back and hurrying near – and it’s not whispering sweet nothings, either! In fact, Jack has bottomed out to the point that the only person who has stuck by him is “Ridge,” a lesbian member of the Ban Garda and the daughterof an old friend. Ni Iomaire, to use, as she prefers, her proper Gaelic name, is Taylor’s on-again-off-again sparring partner and unwilling ally. “And we were back,” Jack observes at one point, "to our usual antagonistic relationship. The rare moments of warmth between us could be counted on the fingers of one hand, yet we continued to be joined together, our fates inexplicably bound despite our personal feelings."
Things quickly take an even more bizarre turn when Jack is approached by his late mother’s confidant, the dyspeptic, chain-smoking, Fr. Malachy; a man with whom Taylor himself has truly never exchanged a civil word. As difficult as it is to believe, Malachy asks Jack for a favor. The priest would like Jack to look into the decapitation murder of the elderly Fr. Joyce … if he’s up to it. It seems that allegations were made years earlier concerning the nature of Fr. Joyce’s extra-curricular “activities” with his altar boys … “want some candy, my son?” The Archdiocese is more than a little afraid that their soiled knickers, as it were, are going to be aired in public. Not to mention the fact that more than a few members of the clergy with similarly “dirty laundry” are beginning to wonder if they might not become the next target of some madman out for a little payback. The idea is that Jack might undertake (unofficially, of course) a discrete investigation and report his findings to Malachy so that appropriate steps can be taken to keep matters “in the family.” More “bad press” the church just doesn’t need, after all.
For reasons Jack himself could probably never explain, he agrees to assist his old nemesis. As to being “discrete,” well discretion is not something Taylor does very well … if at all. While at the same time attempting to catch some punter who seems to be stalking Ridge, Taylor quickly and rather loudly tracks down the murderer of Fr. Joyce. The dilemma Jack faces as to what he intends to do with the information he uncovers drives much of the drama and conflict in the novel. Indeed, the real question at the heart of Priest is: can Taylor live with what he has learned or will it, once again, drive him over the edge?
Priest is, as you might expect from the title, a novel that faces head-on the clergy sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Beyond that, however, the altered role and perception of the church in the Catholic Republic of Ireland also provides Bruen with the opportunity to address the changing social, political and moral climate of his beloved native land, generally, and of Galway, his home city, in particular: "'Galway has changed even in the short time you've been away'," Ridge warns Jack. "Changed, not be confused with 'improved'," he responds. One senses that much of Jack’s inner turmoil – which reaches in this book heights hitherto not scaled or, more appropriately, depths not previously plumbed – is inextricably tied to the rapid, almost convulsive, transformation being wrought in the once rather staid Irish society. Social critique, to be sure, has been a staple of the Jack Taylor series since the beginning. In Priest it assumes an even more prominent role: “The land of saints and scholars was long gone. In an era of fading prosperity, the mugging of priests, rape of nuns was no longer a national horror, it was on the increase, the huge deluge of scandal enveloping the church had caused people to lose faith in the one institution that had seemed invulnerable.”
One might expect a novel such as this to be blatantly anti-clergy. While Bruen unflinchingly paints a picture here of tacit complicity, outright malfeasance and moral cowardice on the part of the church in covering up and (to some extent) perpetuating sexual abuse of the most heinous sort, it’s actually surprising just how balanced the author is in his presentation. It seems to me that Bruen is quite careful in his narrative not to tar everyone with the same brush. He never lets the reader forget that, when push comes to shove (couldn’t resist!) it’s individuals and not institutions or unseen forces who are ultimately responsible for actions and their consequences. The core of the novel in that regard may well be Jack Taylor’s exchange with the broken down priest, Gerald, in Coyle’s Pub “at the arse end of Dominic Street … the last port of call before the street or the grave.” Gerald tells Jack that he was once involved in an exorcism:
“’The demon spoke to me … you wish to know what it said’. There was another drink coming so I figured I could handle it, said, ‘Yes’.
‘It said it would kill me.’
Not for the first time, I jumped to the wrong conclusion, asked
‘Is that why you ended up here’?
He gave a full laugh which disintegrated into a bellow of phlegm then
‘Good Lord no, the demon is the father of lies, I’m here because of drink’.”
They may seem like strange adjectives to use of this novel but, be that as it may, Priest is subtle and, by Bruen’s standards, subdued. Jack nearly goes off the deep end and the action is as frantic, as frenetic, as ever. Nevertheless, his compassion (as evidenced by his search for Serena May’s father, Jeff) and his unrelenting desire to do penance, to make amends somehow, for his complicity in his godchild’s death, keep Jack from falling utterly into the abyss … though he comes damn close! Even amid the near-total chaos and ruin that is his life, there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel for Taylor. On the last page of the book Jack finally achieves the human contact he so craves yet seems so incapable of accepting: "A woman behind me ... began to massage my shoulder ... There was slight pressure from Cody's hand, he was trying to squeeze mine ..." The shattering circumstances of that chance interaction, however, should surprise hell out of even the most perceptive readers.
Priest is notable also for its profusion of minor idiosyncratic characters … from Cody, Jack’s young protégée (suss that, Taylor acquires a “groupie” of sorts in this book!), to Trade, the shady, surly owner of the aforementioned Coyle’s Pub, and of course the numerous other denizens of Galway’s darker recesses … who are encountered by Jack in his travels. In the Bruen canon, Galway has become the equivalent of James Joyce’s Dublin. The thing is, Jack’s journeys through the City of Tribes will never be chronicled or extolled in any “official” guidebook.
When all is said and done, Priest might just be Bruen’s most powerful and affecting work. But, then, I’m unabashedly a fan – someone more than willing to shill for Ken Bruen, content to “pimp” for the “B-Man.” That’s not the case here, however. This one has all the elements that readers have come to expect: the hot-wired prose, the dark humor, the pathos, all fused to a real profundity that (God knows!) the ever-humble Bruen would surely deny. And notwithstanding Jack Taylor’s black moods and rages – the real curse shared by many of us of Irish descent – there is, unaccountably, peace in the pages of this brilliant and disturbing novel if you look hard enough. One can’t help but wonder if, for Jack Taylor at least, it’s come too late.
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