The Killing of the Tinkers by Ken Bruen Review

Someone is killing the tinkers (gypsy travellers) and the Guards aren’t doing anything to find out the culprit or stop the murders - so the leader of one of the clans reaches out to private investigator Jack Taylor to help them.

I’m quite surprised by this one because, even though he’s written some crap novels, I thought Ken Bruen was infallible when it came to his Jack Taylor books - and this, the second Jack Taylor novel in the series, is quite the number two instead. The Killing of the Tinkers is such a nothing of a novel.

Jack doesn’t really seem to care about finding out who’s killing the tinkers and, consequently, neither does the reader. Not that there’s much mystery - it’s set up like the main storyline but it’s barely addressed and almost nothing happens with regards it. Jack finds an unconvincing suspect that, unsurprisingly, didn’t do it, and the one who did is thrown in at the last minute.

Having read several Jack Taylor books before, this one reads like a parody of those novels. Jack gets beat up, he beats others up, he gets drunk, he gets sober, he talks at length about books he likes. It’s Bruen going through the motions with the character, maybe getting to know him more considering this is early in the series, but doing little else but wheel-spinning as none of it goes anywhere meaningful. There’s so little conflict or stakes in the story that it’s never the least bit interesting to read.

There are a few female characters here but they’re so indistinctly written I couldn’t tell the difference between the one who was meant to be the wife, the girlfriend or the… I don’t even know what the other one was meant to be. Cathy, Laura, Kiki - they’re just names on the page. They’re all indulgent of Jack’s bad habits and flimsy so no one stands out - they’re written all the same, ie. poorly.

The Killing of the Tinkers is such a lacklustre shrug of a novel - I felt like I was forgetting the barely-tangible story as I was reading it. I got through it because of Bruen’s smooth prose but even as a fan I wouldn’t say this does anything to make the book worth reading. Utterly pointless and boring, this is easily the worst Ken Bruen novel I’ve read - even the usually dependable writers let you down occasionally!