Jack’s got two cases on the go in this one: find out if a wealthy, connected woman is a black widow-type killer of men she marries, and locate an elderly sadist who went by the nickname “Lucifer” when she worked at the notorious Magdalene Laundries. Vengeance is on the menu - but will persistently drunk Jack be able to serve it?
Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor books are fantastic but, as I’m finding with these early ones, they seem to take off once the series hits double digits and not before. The first one was ok, but the second was plain terrible and the third, The Magdalene Martyrs, is only a notch above that.
The storylines in this one are much clearer and more compelling than in The Killing of the Tinkers though it’s funny how useless Jack is in these early stories. He does almost nothing in the case of the black widow to find out if she’s guilty or not, and manages to do even less in locating the Magdalene Lucifer. I’m pretty sure he stumbles across her through dumb luck more than anything! He’s a passive observer at best rather than an effective private investigator.
And that’s the other thing: this book might be better than The Killing of the Tinkers, but not by much. I’m not 100% on the details as it just didn’t grab me most of the time so my attention drifted a lot, but I think the case of the Magdalene Lucifer was completely pointless as the mobster who tasked Jack in finding her already knew enough to enact his revenge. He’s also old and dying but he’s been carrying this grudge since he was a kid and is only now looking into settling her hash - why? If he was as passionately bitter as he apparently is, why not do all of this much sooner?
I got the impression that Bruen was attempting some kind of theme of forgiveness and/or redemption with Jack’s mother near the end but it’s half-hearted and shoe-horned in at the end, if that’s what he was going for.
The short interstitial chapters showing the horrors of the Magdalene Laundries were grimly fascinating, Bruen’s prose is as slick and easy to read as ever, and the novel is dotted with intriguingly esoteric literary recs (Henry Green, Derek Raymond). There’s not a lot that’s especially impressive here unfortunately.
Bruen’s written far better Jack Taylor books (In the Galway Silence, Galway Girl) so The Magdalene Martyrs is an easy miss unless you’re a completist and I’d recommend reading the later books in the series instead - it’s not the kind of series you need to read in order anyway. Also, Claire Keegan wrote a much better novel about the Magdalene Laundries in Small Things Like These, which is definitely worth checking out if you’re interested in this subject.
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