When Jack Taylor blew town at the end of The Guards his alcoholism was a distant memory & sober dreams of a new life in London were shining in his eyes. In the opening pages of The Killing of the Tinkers Jack's back in Galway a year later with a new leather jacket on his back a pack of smokes in his pocket a few grams of coke in his waistband & a pint of Guinness on his mind. So much for new beginnings. Before long he's sunk into his old patterns lifting his head from the bar only every few days appraising his surroundings for mere minutes & then descending deep into the alcoholic drug-induced fugue he prefers to the real world. But a big gypsy walks into the bar one day during a moment of Jack's clarity & changes all that with a simple request. Jack knows the look in this man's eyes a look of hopelessness mixed with resolve topped off with a quietly simmering rage; he's seen it in the mirror. Recognizing a kindred soul Jack agrees to help him knowing but not admitting that getting involved is going to lead to more bad than good. But in Jack Taylor's world bad & good are part & parcel of the same lost cause & besides no one ever accused Jack of having good sense. Ken Bruen wowed critics & readers alike when he introduced Jack Taylor in The Guards; he'll blow them away with The Killing of the Tinkers a novel of gritty brilliance that cements Bruen's place among the greats of modern crime fiction.