Book Summary and Reviews of Sanctuary by Ken Bruen

Sanctuary by Ken Bruen

Sanctuary

A Jack Taylor Novel

by Ken Bruen

  • Critics' Consensus (0):
  • Published:
  • May 2009, 208 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

When a letter containing a list of victims arrives in the post, P.I. Jack Taylor tells himself that it’s got nothing to do with him. He has enough to do just staying sane. His close friend Ridge is recovering from surgery, and alcohol’s siren song is calling to him ever more insistently.

A guard and then a judge die in mysterious circumstances. But it is not until a child is added to the list that Taylor determines to find the identity of the killer, and stop them at any cost. What he doesn’t know is that his relationship with the killer is far closer than he thinks. And it’s about to become deeply personal.

Spiked with dark humor, and fueled with rage at man’s inhumanity to man, this is crime writing at its darkest and most original.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"In his seventh time out, Taylor isn't as compelling as he has been, or needs to be, to compensate for Bruen's pedestrian plotting. " - Kirkus Reviews

"Taylor confronts the unlikely killer in what is a less than convincing showdown." - Publishers Weekly

"Bruen's deft effort is recommended for all mystery collections." - Library Journal

This information about Sanctuary was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Click here and be the first to review this book!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Ken Bruen Author Biography

Ken Bruen is one of the most prominent Irish crime writers of the last two decades. Born in Galway, he spent twenty-five years traveling the world before he began writing in the mid 1990s. As an English teacher, Bruen worked in South Africa, Japan, and South America, where he once spent a short time in a Brazilian jail. He has two long-running series: one starring a disgraced former policeman named Jack Taylor, the other a London police detective named Inspector Brant.

Praised for their sharp insight into the darker side of today's prosperous Ireland, Bruen's novels are marked by grim atmosphere and clipped prose. Among the best known are his White Trilogy (1998-2000) and The Guards (2001), the Shamus award-winning first novel in the Jack Taylor series. The next Jack Taylor ...

... Full Biography
Link to Ken Bruen's Website

Other books by Ken Bruen at BookBrowse

8 more...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Sanctuary, try these:

  • Peculiar Ground jacket

    Peculiar Ground

    by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

    Published 2019

    About this book

    The Costa Award-winning author of The Pike makes her literary fiction debut with an extraordinary historical novel in the spirit of Wolf Hall and Atonement - a great English country house novel, spanning three centuries, that explores surprisingly timely themes of immigration and exclusion.

  • The Women in the Castle jacket

    The Women in the Castle

    by Jessica Shattuck

    Published 2018

    About this book

    Three women, haunted by the past and the secrets they hold.

  • Arrowood jacket

    Arrowood

    by Laura McHugh

    Published 2017

    About this book

    A haunting novel from the author of The Weight of Blood about a young woman's return to her childhood home—and her encounter with the memories and secrets it holds

We have 5 read-alikes for Sanctuary, but non-members are limited to three results. Join free to see the complete list of recommendations.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
When No One Else Will
by Amanda Skenandore
1940s Chicago nurse risks everything at an illegal women’s clinic during a high-profile trial of courage and sisterhood.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket
    The Jellyfish Problem
    by Tessa Yang
    A marine biologist rescues a Maine island menaced by a giant glowing jellyfish in this inventive debut.
  • Book Jacket
    Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young
    by Zayd Ayers Dohrn
    Son of Weather Underground radicals recounts life on the run and decades of revolutionary struggle.
  • Book Jacket
    Look What You Made Me Do
    by John Lanchester
    A propulsive tale of intergenerational tension and revenge from the Booker Prize nominee.
Who Said...

A few books well chosen, and well made use of, will be more profitable than a great confused Alexandrian library.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Book
Trivia
  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

Q S, S

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.