Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Green Hell: A Jack Taylor Novel
Green Hell: A Jack Taylor Novel
Green Hell: A Jack Taylor Novel
Audiobook3 hours

Green Hell: A Jack Taylor Novel

Written by Ken Bruen

Narrated by John Lee

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

Ireland's master of poetic crime fiction, called "an Irish treasure" by Shelf Awareness, spins a new alcohol-fueled Jack Taylor plot, featuring a Rhodes scholar gone astray, and professor with a violent streak, and a young woman who almost makes Jack look tame.

The award-winning crime writer Ken Bruen is a as joyously unapologetic in his writing as he is wickedly poetic. In the new Jack Taylor novel Green Hell, Bruen's dark angle of a protagonist has hit rock bottom: one of his best friends is dead, the other has stopped speaking to him; he has given up battling his addiction to alcohol and pills; and his firing from the Irish national police, the Garda, is ancient history.

But Jack isn't about to embark on a self-improvement plan. Instead, he has taken up a vigilante case against a respected professor of literature at the University of Galway who has a violent habit his friends in high places are only too happy to ignore. And when Jack rescues preppy American student on a Rhodes Scholarship for a couple of kid thugs, he also unexpectedly gains a new sidekick, who abandons his thesis on Beckett to write a biography of Galway's most magnetic rogue.

Between pub crawls and violent outbursts, Jack's vengeful plot against the professor soon spirals toward chaos. Enter Emerald, an edgy young Goth who could either be the answer to Jack's problems, or the last ripped stitch in his undoing. Ireland may be known as a "green Eden," but in Jack Taylor's world, the national color has a decidedly lethal sheen.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 7, 2015
ISBN9781622317509
Green Hell: A Jack Taylor Novel
Author

Ken Bruen

Ken Bruen is one of the most prominent Irish crime writers of the last two decades. He received a doctorate in metaphysics, taught English in South Africa, and then became a crime novelist. He is the recipient of two Barry Awards, two Shamus Awards and has twice been a finalist for the Edgar Award. He lives in Galway, Ireland.

More audiobooks from Ken Bruen

Related to Green Hell

Related audiobooks

Mystery For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Green Hell

Rating: 3.5081966721311475 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

61 ratings14 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I have enjoyed reading Ken Bruen's books. This is the first time I have heard one on audiobook. While enjoying the plot and its development, I was somewhat confused by the reader's inconsistent use of American and Irish accents. Since the American was from Boston and visiting Ireland I expected more consistency. It may have been that the reader wanted to inject some variation to suggest that the character was confused about his own accent but it wasn't until that character was no longer in the book that the Irish accent was consistent and easy to follow. As it was, I sometimes had difficulty determining which character was speaking.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Boru Kennedy, an American student is in Galway doing research for a treatise on Samuel Becket, is set upon by a couple of thugs and while in the process of receiving a serious beating is rescued by Jack Taylor. Striking up an unlikely friendship and spending a bit of time together, Kennedy thinks he may have found someone more interesting to write about. So he learns of Jack’s intention to put a permanent end to a professor’s extra curricular activities of raping young women.. Also into Jack’s life comes a clever, young, mixed-up girl who has a thing for the vengeful act herself and she wants Jack to come out and play in her latest performance. Jack also acquires a puppy. Oh dear!A slightly different format than the previous entries in the series, this one is split into two parts. The first is from the young American’s point-of-view along with some notes he’s written for the intended biography. The second returns to the more usual Jack Taylor affair. It only remains to see who gets out of this one alive or with all their body parts intact.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I wondered what Ken Bruen could do after he had pulled a biblical Job on Jack, killing his friends, his loved ones, destroying him over and over for so many books. You have to write something else after a while, right? Bruen lets up a little in this one: of course he kills off another close one, but he introduces a common device these days--the smart, young woman computer whiz. She advances the plot. She makes advances to everyone. She rates a cover.
    Bruen moves on to a new tactic in his writing, too. He still is sparse (poetic noir some critics call it), creates reading lists, and tries to do a George Herbert page layout at times, but now has another voice, that of a grad student American, who sounds much like the original Taylor storytelling voice, but this kid is trying to be the next Jack Taylor so his voice should, too, I suppose.

    The book almost works. Close enough.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    First off I won this book on the early readers program. I didn't want to like this book. This is a book on cd. I started listening to the first cd and found it incredibly hard to follow, whether it was the writing or the reader or a combination of the two I don't know. It took me four or five times starting the first cd to finally pick out the lilt of the readers accent and get into the story. This story takes place in Ireland and the reader had a nice Irish accent. But, once I started to understand his accent I rally got into this story.It is brutal, noirish, violent and sad but at times it was hilariously funny even making me laugh out loud a couple of times.This is one of a series of novels about Jack Taylor a disgraced former cop, an alcoholic, drug using, soldier of fortune type. The language was a little rough but fit the character perfectly.He is on the track of a professor who rapes and tortures young students. I found the end a little anti climactic but interesting. And I found myself interested in reading more about Jack Taylor.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I suspect this book would be better read than absorbed on audio discs. I had a difficult time paying attention to John Lee's voice or perhaps it was his style of delivery. It is noir all right. The grizzled crime solver has no trouble drinking with anyone at any time. The crime is heinous. It's a good story and a quick one. My thanks to the author and LibraryThing for a complimentary copy.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Green Hell audio book is another story about a favorite detective of mine, that Jack Taylor fellow. Jack is a force of nature, He's the grim, hard sort of man that I would want trying to catch my killer if I was murdered. This story moves in fits and starts and I struggled to retain information about the characters as well as exactly what Jack's investigation was even about. I've listened to audio books that gripped me to the point where I had to stop driving, turn off the stove, let my coffee go cold. This is not one of those audio books. It is an unrelenting narrative into a group of people who drink so much its hard to even read about how often they are drinking. In the end I just gritted my teeth and got through it. Maybe that was the point, that the crime was so awful, the writer intended to convey the feeling of unmerciful pain that human beings are capable of visiting upon other human beings. If so, the book is a success.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Disconcerting. Violent. Confusing. Downright thrilling.When I first started listening to this book, I was happy as hell that it was only 3 discs long. I had serious problems with the narrator, John Lee. He waxed nauseatingly poetic and was So. Damned. Dramatic. That. I. Had. Difficulty. Following. Him. I didn't have a clue what was going on. It was just a jumble of words. I sort of understood that a kid researching his thesis subject gets caught up in Jack Taylor's seriously messed up life and ends up dead. But I honestly had to re-listen to the first disc and a half because I truly did not understand what was happening. Then it all kind of clicked when a Lisbeth Salander lookalike shows up as a Goth Avenging Angel. It had one of the best endings I've seen in a book in a long time. I think I would like to go back and read some of the earlier Taylor books. I think that physically reading them will be more satisfying than listening to them, particularly if they are all written in the manner of Green Hell. I would recommend the story to anyone enjoying a hardboiled mystery... but in written form. Unless you have listened to other taylor books, this is not one I would recommend to a listener. However, if you are familiar with the character and the narrator and enjoy them together, then this might be right up your alley.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I love Ken Bruen, and have always enjoyed his Jack Taylor novels. I was particularly interested that this novel was told from the perspectives of two separate first-person narrators. It was a conceit that worked for me. My only real problem with the audio book was that it was much too short; it seemed that, contrary to the advertising on the box, it was an abridged version of the tale.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Lots of brutality. Interesting use of two different first person narrators. Jack Taylor comes off as a bit much.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Looking for a crime novel with riveting suspense, charming characters and plenty of local Irish color? Pass on by, nothing here for you. Looking for graphic brutality, incest, animal cruelty, rape and alcoholic rant? This is for you, then. I received this 3-CD audio book in exchange for an honest review, and if that wasn’t an implied contract I would have chucked it after playing the first CD. I’m pretty much inured to most of the brutality and language in Green Hell but there are a host of other issues I’d take with it. The narrator, for whom each comma is a full stop and each period a coffee break, sounds like the voice-over on a 50’s film noir mystery. Incessant, irrelevant pop culture references and commentary on national and international affairs must make up a quarter of the text if not more. Ken Bruen has not so artfully packaged a short story into a stand-alone book, and it just isn’t a very good short story. Rubbish.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I have not previously read this author so it took a bit of getting used to. At the beginning, I didn’t think I was going to enjoy this audiobook but resigned myself to listening to it as I received it on condition that I give it a fair review.Boy was I mistaken.This particular volume starts out somewhat like the 100th epidode of a television series with American Boru Kennedy forgoing his dissertation on Samuel Beckett to research the life and career of the well lubricated ex-Garda officer Jack Taylor. Many are the scenes where Kennedy listens to Jack Taylor anecdotes from a variety of interviewees. These interviews are interspersed with scenes where Jack himself is on the trail of a serial rapist that the church authorities are protecting.The story changes perspective radically when Boru is arrested for the assaults that Jack is investigation. From there, the reader sees the story from Jack’s point of view.Taylor himself reminds me somewhat of an Irish version of Matthew Scudder in When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes (a book in which Scudder is unburdened by the burden of sobriety). He seems to have burned more bridges than most people cross in a lifetime.Ken Bruen writes with a snappy, machine-gun bullet style that one would expect more from a San Francisco beat poet than an Irish mystery writer. “I told him I was an atheist and he laughed, loud and warm. He had one of those truly epic laughs. It was so rare but when he let go, it was all-embracing. His eyes and his wounded spirit on song.Said,‘See how that flies when a fucker shoves a gun in your mouth at three-thirty in the morning.’Riddle me that.The books he was reading in those last days. As if he knew something.Satan, your Kingdom mustCome down….(Massive Attack)Playing while I perused the book titles. “Perused”A fifty-euro sound bite, Jack said. Adding,“That track used in two TV series:HannibalAnd Lector.”Unfortunately, this style of writing does not lend itself well to audio recordings. The spaces in the written copy that provide invaluable assistance in understanding the pace of the story are absent in the audio recording requiring a great deal of effort from the listener to follow along. In addition, British reader John Lee, while generally an able narrator, does an unconvincing job of sounding like the Boston-born graduate student that or the burned out Irish tough the narrator is supposed to be. In his defense, Lee’s sing-song voice began to grow on me and eventually melded with the story like bongo drums at the Gaslight Club.Bottom line: Ken Bruen has written a story as gritty and hardboiled as it gets. Add to it the aforementioned poetic style, a shot of Jameson’s and a good splash of Irish profanity and you have a good story that could be read in an evening. I encourage you to give it a shot.*Quotations are cited from an advanced reading copy and may not be the same as appears in the final published edition. The review book was based on an advanced reading copy obtained at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review. While this does take any ‘not worth what I paid for it’ statements out of my review, it otherwise has no impact on the content of my review.FYI: On a 5-point scale I assign stars based on my assessment of what the book needs in the way of improvements:•5 Stars – Nothing at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.•4 Stars – It could stand for a few tweaks here and there but it’s pretty good as it is.•3 Stars – A solid C grade. Some serious rewriting would be needed in order for this book to be considered good or memorable.•2 Stars – This book needs a lot of work. A good start would be to change the plot, the character development, the writing style and the ending. •1 Star - The only thing that would improve this book is a good bonfire.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found this title to be a little dry, but the plot was interesting and somewhat disturbing. It's a dark tale, but had great potential. I wish there had been a little more depth.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    3.5 Jack Taylor is a wreck of a man, a heavy drinker, blunt to the extent of rudeness, with very few he can call friend, addicted to violence but if there is a miscarriage of justice to right he is the one you want on your side. He reads like there is no tomorrow and has his own moral compass.The novel is written to reflect the personality of Jack, blunt and to the point. There are no wasted words here and the humor is the sarcastic type or dark irony. A very different type of main character, yet something in this series speaks to me. Maybe it shows that there is some good in even the flawed and that there is someone there to right a wrong. In this one he meets his match in a young woman he comes in contact with, a young woman who changes her personalities like a chameleon. There is one part of this one I had a hard time with and if you are a animal lover you will too. A different type of series, one more bold and in your face but I love it. Many quotes from authors in this one which made it even more interesting.ARC from NetGalley.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I've been a fan of Ken Bruen's wonderful noir Jack Taylor books since the very first, The Guards, and I doubt that I will ever forget my reaction to the gut-wrenching ending of The Dramatist. This is not a series to read when you're feeling low and needing a pick-me-up. Jack Taylor may have the soul of a poet, but he has enough flaws for two people, his addictions will always be with him, and he can turn extremely violent in the blink of an eye. But there's something about the way Bruen writes this man that makes me care deeply for him, regardless of how lost or hopeless he is. Jack is lost, Jack is hopeless, for the simple reason that he cares so much, and it's a difficult thing to watch someone whose heart and intentions are so good continue to do things that can be so bad.In Green Hell, once again Jack is dealing with someone who's seemingly above the law. As far as he's concerned, he has nothing to lose, so he welcomes the chance to mete out some long overdue justice. Since Jack no longer has friends, Bruen has paired him up with two opposites: a naive young American and a mysterious Goth girl. Having been saved from what could've been a deadly beating, Boru Kennedy is a young American who's completely under Jack's spell. To him Jack may as well be an Irish Don Quixote tilting at Galway's windmills of injustice. Kennedy's thesis on Becket used to take up his every waking thought, but now he can't get enough of Jack, and through his obsession, readers get to see Taylor through completely new eyes.Emerald the Goth girl refuses to be pinned down. Is she temptress, joker, damsel in distress, or the purest form of retribution? Jack seems a bit dazzled and unable to make up his mind just what she's up to-- or if she's up to anything at all.With its new sidekicks, Green Hell has a different feel-- an almost retrospective one-- to the other books in the series, and I enjoyed little touches like Ziggy and a postcard about The Poisoned Pen bookstore. But Jack is a bit too much out of control in this one, and as a result the book doesn't have the full power of several of the earlier books. But it's impossible for me to stop in Ireland without going to Galway to check on Jack Taylor. He's the kind of guy you never ever forget-- and one that you never stop hoping will have just a tiny smidgen of good luck. Just once.