JULY/AUGUST 2006
www.celtic-connection.com
Page 29
Jack Taylor: Quite Possibly The World's Worst Detective
THE DRAMATIST By Ken Bruen St. Martin's Minotaur ISBN 0-312-31647-X
Reviewed By Sharon Greer
Two young women are the latest murder victims in Ken Bruen's most recent Jack Taylor series, The Dramatist.
Taylor's drug dealer, Stewart, is in jail, so Jack is off the drugs, booze and pills in this fourth installment of quite possibly the world's worst detective.
An old friend contacts Jack to ask a favour. She wants him to visit the sordid Mountjoy Prison in Dublin to visit his dealer who has been traumatized by a recent tragedy.
Jack is reluctant but agrees to go see him, only to discover that Stewart's sister Sarah has been murdered and Jack has been asked to investigate. A clue left at the scene of the crime under Sarah's body, is a copy of The Collected Plays and Poems of J.M. Synge.
Two words are written in black ink on the title page: THE DRAMATIST. What is the murderer trying to convey?
After visiting a woman friend one evening, Jack is kidnapped by a band of vigilantes fashioning themselves after the Pikemen. Bruen manages to cleverly incorporate the 1798 Rebellion and the use of pikes into the narrative.
KEN
BRt)£N
SHAMUS AWARD - WINNING AUTHOR Of Jftt GUARDS
THE DRAMATIST
The Wexford Pikemen fought the despised Yeomen in the Rebellion with the formidable pike. They were easier to use than a musket or bayonet. Originally the handle was
about six feet long with a six inch spearhead - a deadly weapon.
These modern day "pikemen" want Jack to join them in their virulent crusade to "rid the streets of evil." Jack Taylor is not impressed.
To make matters worse, Jack runs into his old flame, Ann Henderson, who has just recently married a brutal Irish policeman, Tim Coffey. Coffey likes to leave his mark all over Ann's face.
When Taylor sees her sitting in a cafe one day, he decides to approach her but is heartbroken when he notices bruising on her left cheekbone.
When Coffey discovers Ann has seen Jack, his insane jealousy kicks in and he sets up a lethal trap for Taylor which leaves him with a limp. When Coffey turns up dead with his skull caved in Jack is the number one suspect.
His strained relationship with his mother is rapidly deteriorating. Dementia has set in after her stroke and Jack finds out she has ended up in a horrendous nursing home. Just when he is ready to move her to a better place, she dies, leaving behind one guilt-ridden son.
But Jack Taylor's failures as a human being are what makes him so endearing to his readers. And Ken Bruen manages to leave us dangling yet again at the end of another scorching Jack Taylor adventure.
By
MAUREEN KEANE
SLAINTE - TO YOUR GOOD HEALTH!
Blueberries on my Mind
HIS time of the y| year you can't S*&£S help but have v^^^ blueberries on your mind. Summer is blueberry season.
In the United Sates, July is National Blueberry Month while on the other side of the border in British Columbia, August is Blueberry Month.
Recently Tufts University analyzed 60 fruits and vegetables for their antioxidant abilities. Blueberries came out on top; they were best able to destroy free radicals. In the body, free radicals act like bullets. They can shoot holes in cells and can rearrange your genetic material.
The result is tissue damage and potentially cancer. Many researchers believe free radicals cause many, if not most, of the maladies that plague modern man and may be why the consumption of antioxidant rich fruits and vegetables is linked to lower rates of almost all diseases. Anthocyanins are pigments found in berries that are responsible for both their
vibrant colors and antioxidant properties.
In the past five years a number of studies have been published on the effect of blueberries on brains. Researchers fed a group of old rats blueberries and discovered they were able to perform as well as young rats when given a memory test.
Another study found that blueberries protected old rats from a number of neurodegenerative processes in the brain and yet another found it decreased the damage from strokes.
But blueberries in the brain? A recent study showed that blueberries reduced memory loss when fed to old rats. Later, after the rats were sacrificed, blueberry anthocyanins were found in their brains.
Before this no one knew anthocyanins could cross the blood brain barrier to directly affect the nerve cells there. Think about that the next time you get thirsty and reach for a cola.
When Slainte was young a common science lesson was to put a tooth in cola so the first graders could watch
it slowly dissolve. Do you really want to bath your brain cells in a liquid that dissolves teeth? Cola sales may explain a lot of what is going on this country.
If your brain does not quite work as fast as it used to and your memory feels like it is just about as good as an old rat's, you might want to consider blueberries.
Blueberries work well on the other end of your body too. They kill bacteria and are used in Sweden to cure diarrhea.
When blueberries are not in season you can use frozen, dried or even freeze dried berries. They retain the same abilities as the fresh. Freeze dried blueberries sprinkled on top of cold cereal almost instantly plump when milk is poured over them.
You can also drink blueberry juice but be careful and read the labels. Some are juice blends that dilute the more expensive blueberry with a cheaper juice like apple.
Different fruits neutralize different types of free radicals so it makes sense not to limit yourself to one juice. Slainte is very partial to Knudsen's Organic Just Juice™ line.
They are one of the few companies that make a pure blueberry juice. Buy a few bottles and create your own juice combinations.
Try a mixture of their grape and blueberry juices with a splash of cranberry over ice. Slainte!
•
Maureen Keane has a master's degree in nutrition from Bastyr University and is the best selling author of 14 books including the newly revised What to Eat When You Have Cancer.
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