Author:Ken Bruen
Some people help the less fortunate. Others kill them.
Evil has many guises. Jack Taylor has encountered most of them but nothing before has ever truly terrified him until a group called Headstone rears its ugly head. An elderly priest is viciously beaten until nearly dead. A special needs boy is brutally attacked. A series of seemingly random, insane, violent events even has the Guards shaken.
Most would see a headstone as a marker of the dead, but this coterie of evil intends to act as a death knell to every aspect of Jack's life as an act of appalling violence alerts him to the horror enveloping Galway.
Accepting the power of Headstone, Jack realizes that in order to fight back he must relinquish the remaining shreds of what has made him human - knowledge that may have come too late to prevent an act of such ferocious evil that the whole country would be changed forever - and in the worst way.
With awful clarity, Jack knows that not only might he be powerless to stop it but that he may not have the grit needed to even face it.
Hard hitting... a remarkable series
—— Publishers WeeklyHeadstone is an excellent addition to the Jack Taylor series
—— Philadelphia InquirerKen Bruen is brilliant. While Headstone is the stuff of nightmares, it is also the stuff of redemption, even at great cost. You will feel wrung out after reading this one, but all the gladder for it
—— BookreporterHeadstone is one of the year's best reading pleasures
—— David J. Montgomery, Crime Fiction DossierBruen is threatening to become a mass cult figure in the US as well as a critical favourite
—— Allen Barra, The AtlanticA nonstop rampage of intrigue, mayhem, lunacy and dark-dark-dark humour
—— Shelf Awareness[Alex Cross] has become one of the greatest fictional detectives of all time, a character for the ages.
—— DOUGLAS PRESTON and LINCOLN CHILDAlex Cross is a legend.
—— HARLAN COBENPatterson boils a scene down to the single, telling detail, the element that defines a character or moves a plot along. It's what fires off the movie projector in the reader's mind.
—— MICHAEL CONNELLYPatterson knows where our deepest fears are buried... there's no stopping his imagination.
—— NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWPatterson is in a class by himself.
—— VANITY FAIR