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Jack’s surname was a personal joke; Taylors Hill is the snotty area of Galway, a place
Jack would never have been allowed to visit.
I never expected Jack to go global… In my view, he was too Irish, too parochial, too damn perverse to have a wide appeal.
But I wrote him as he was whispering in my ear, and the first book, it was like I knew him.
And I do.
Alas.
The alcoholism is based on my late brother, a man of true warm spirit, my best friend, and he died a vagrant in the Australian outback, so I knew of what I wrote.
And when they come back at me about Jack being so angry?
Gee, wonder where that comes from.
The Irish, we laugh and drink our merry way, fueled by Gui
never a worry in the world.
What a load of bollocks!
I fucking hate that.
Alcoholism has destroyed the best and the finest of our race, as Jack is fond of quoting.
Most of our literature applauds the culture of drinking.
Jesus Wept.
I thought,
“What if there were a series of books showing the sheer havoc and misery that drink causes?”
Whoops.
Wouldn’t play well if you wanted Irish Awards or the Irish Tourist Board to endorse you.
And they having serious Euros to invest in the appropriate Irish writer.
And you know, I said, like I’ve said to me cost so many times,
The fook with that.
Here’s the irony… Seven books in, the tourist board calls me, would I be open to showing Japanese tourists Jack’s Galway?
If that isn’t irony?
I was thinking, maybe have them beaten up with a hurly, get a real taste of Jack’s city.
Our national sport is hurling, a cross between hockey and homicide, and it’s fast, brutal, skillful, and I grew up with it.
A perfect hurly is made from ash, honed by an artisan, and sometimes has metal bands on the end.
It’s a little like a Louisville slugger. I have two of those, sent to me by two of the best writers in mystery today.
A hurly has a swoosh like the slugger and that same lethal intent.
When I was in Texas last year and got to hit a few, they asked,
“Where did you learn to play ball?”
I didn’t.
I played hurling.
I’m asked,
“How much of me is in Jack?’
The rage and reading.
Absolutely.
And… sure… some of the beatings.
The booze?
’Tis a sad tale, but I don’t drink Gui
… Horror, I drink Bud…
Jack would indeed take a hurly to me.
The ordinary people of Galway, so beloved to Jack’s heart, they shout at me from cars… Jack has been a teetotaler for three books.
“Give the poor bastard a drink.”
Writing Jack has been all I know of heaven and hell. It drains me to write him, and I hope to Christ he’ll stop talking to me.
It’s too personal, too harrowing.
I write another series on UK cops… The main character is Brant, and writing those books is a vacation, a breeze… pure fun… or a short story… more time in the sun, but Jack…
Otto Penzler once said to me,
“Bruen, what is it with you, you get us to love characters and then you kill them?”
Indeed.
I read on one of those blog discussions, the big no-no is… don’t kill a child.
Gotcha.
Let me go classical here a moment, a little learned, or pseudo, if you prefer, or as our Irish teenagers in their new American tones say,
“Like, whatever.”
There is a quote from Aeschylus that is the real motivation behind Jack Taylor, at least for me. It best helps me write him.
Pain that ca
Falls drop by drop
Upon the heart
And in our own despair,
Against our will,
There comes wisdom
Through the awful
Grace of God
The key word for me there is always… awful.
With Jack, I wanted to see just how much suffering you can inflict on one human being
Till he finally breaks.
Alcohol
Cocaine
Despair
Depression
Betrayal
Suicide
Murder
Jack’s been there.
Did quit smoking, though.
Not that he’s happy with it.
And those lists?
I’ve been asked so often,
“What’s with the bloody lists?”
I’ve studied chaos, damn, lived it most of me life, and one response to it is to make lists.
Try to impose order on a world spi
The later books, the lists got dropped, editorial decision more than anything else.
And quoting other mystery writers.
Because I love to. Not just my favorites, but also ones less known that maybe readers might pick up.
In Priest, I changed direction, went with simply Pascal’s Pensées. Jack steals it from a library in a mental hospital. Nothing else quite seemed to fit the mood of the book.
While I was pla
Jack would always go down the dark streets of the history we’d kept under wraps, like the Magdalen laundries. I grew up right beside them and knew firsthand of the horrors therein.
It was an Irish series, so there had to be a priest, a recurring character, but I didn’t want your lovable Barry Fitzgerald gombeen of The Quiet Man. I wanted a flawed human version to whom priesthood was simply a job, and one he didn’t especially care for.
When I was a child, the country was so poor, for many the only hope of education was by joining the priesthood. Callow youths, like ca
What an awful burden to lay on any child. No wonder they went nuts.
Fr. Malachy would always be Jack’s nemesis and, like the best of enemies, they even joined uneasy forces for Priest.
I knew from the off that this series was going to get me into all sorts of shite in Ireland and so went completely for broke.
Jack’s mother.
Like Italians and the other Europeans, we love our mothers… Never no mind she might be the biggest bitch who ever walked the planet, Irish boys love their mammy.
Fook that.
Jack loathed his mother and never tried to hide it. She was everything that is worst about our country.
Pious
Sanctimonious
A hypocrite
And a mouth on her
And worst of all… long-suffering, though she instigated most of the suffering.
Jack was having none of it, took her on from the get-go, and it seemed natural her staunchest ally would be Fr. Malachy… a match made only in the malice of Ireland.
Naturally, readers presumed Jack’s mother was based on my own, as if even I have that kind of cojones.
My mother was once asked what she thought of the series, said,
“I never read him.”
Nor did she.
Ever.
Bitter?
Not really.
I grew up in a house where books and reading were regarded as not only a waste of time but a waste of money.
God forbid you ever waste money.
My mother, Lord rest her, said,
“Ken lives in a separate room from the rest of us.”
She was right.
By one of those odd coincidences, when Jack’s mother had a stroke, so did mine, so all that Jack experienced then is based on what I was going through.
It’s been eerie with the series like that.
The Killing of the Tinkers, I had a young psycho beheading swans. The swans are to Galway what the apes are to Gibraltar, though a little more attractive to look at.
My publisher was horrified, said,
“You can’t do that!”
Notice how often that crops up in my career.
You can’t.
You daren’t.
You shouldn’t.
I refused to back down, and just before the book was published, some lunatic began disemboweling the swans.
I sent my publisher the article, and he said,
“Okay… long as it’s not you doing it.”