It's almost impossible to be thrown out of the Gardaí, but former police detective Jack Taylor has managed it…

Following the death of his father, Jack finds himself disgraced, unemployed, and drinking himself into oblivion when he is asked to privately investigate a teenage suicide. 

The case is one of several successive suicides from the same bridge in Galway, and all the victims are teenage females. 

The Irish police, the Guards, are quick to dismiss the deaths as coincidences, suggesting the bridge has become a destination spot for depressed teens. 

However, when he is approached by Ann Henderson, the mother of one of the girls, Jack begins to uncover facts that suggest otherwise… 

Plunged into a dangerous confrontation with the police and a powerful but suspicious businessman, Jack finds himself questioning his instincts, his motives, and who – if anyone – he can trust. 

The Guards, winner of the Shamus Award for Best Novel and finalist for Edgar Award for Best Novel, is the first title in Ken Bruen's best-selling crime series featuring Jack Taylor. 

Praise for Ken Bruen:

'Taylor is a classic figure: an ex-cop turned seedy private eye . . . The book's pleasure comes from listening to Taylor's eloquent rants, studded with references to songs and books. His voice is wry and bittersweet, but somehow always hopeful.' - Seattle Times 

'Ken Bruen, Ireland's first real crime novelist . . . the Godfather of the modern Irish crime novel . . . Bruen writes in machine gun fashion, his words verbal bullets that rip through the veneer of the safe bourgeois Catholic society in which he was reared . . . The acerbic wit and off-the-wall comments throughout all the books are somewhat reminiscent of the work of Raymond Chandler and Peter Cheyenne.' - Irish Times 

'Ken Bruen doesn't need a lot of words to tell his tales of perpetually falling Irish angel Jack Taylor—he knows the right ones. Bruen gets more done in a paragraph, a word, even a fragment of a word, than most writers get in an entire four-hundred page doorstop. If his prose was any sharper, your eyeballs would bleed.' - Mystery Scene 

'One sign of a winning detective series is how much fun the author has with the creation. In the 11th Jack Taylor novel, Green Hell, Ken Bruen is having a shameless good time . . . Go ahead—crack open Green Hell and have some fun.' - Shelf Awareness 

'The Taylor series is generally very pleasurable to read . . . filled with a glorious love of the language and an engaging protagonist who is unlike almost any other. It's unclear at this point how many more go-arounds Taylor has left in him . . . but it will be a privilege to be with him for as long as he's able.' - Strand Magazine

Ken Bruen received a doctorate in metaphysics, taught English in Africa, and then became a crime novelist. The critically acclaimed author of ten previous Jack Taylor novels and The White Trilogy, he is the recipient of two Barry Awards and two Shamus Awards and has twice been a finalist for the Edgar Award. He lives in Galway, Ireland.