Sometimes I enjoy books and movies that are a little bit against the grain. (My wife hates when I go into the movie store alone; she always fears I’ll come out with something like this.) The disappointing thing about the thriller genre is that there aren’t that many unusual books out there. People tend to want the same thing, those old fall-back tropes–and that’s fine, because I enjoy those as well. But sometimes a person wants a little spice. The best I’ve found in this vein in the last few years are the novels of Ken Bruen. Bruen’s an Irishman, so you know the jokes–and the liquor–are going to be flowing. And flow they do. Bruen’s character are so vivid they jump off the page, and the voice ranges from devastatingly deep to achingly funny, sometimes in the same sentence. If you’re looking for something a bit different, a bit out of the ordinary, you can’t go wrong with Bruen and his feisty, deadpan-honest Jack Taylor.