Tower

Ken Bruen (b. 1951) 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. Bruen continues to live and work in Galway.

Reed Farrel Coleman (b. 1956) is a mystery author best known for creating the Moe Prager series. Under his own name and the pen name Tony Spinosa, he has published fourteen novels, beginning with Life Goes Sleeping (1991), which introduced the three-volume Dylan Klein series. In 2001, Coleman published Walking the Perfect Square, a gritty story about Moe Prager, a retired New York cop who becomes embroiled in the hunt for a missing college student. Since then, he has written six more novels starring Prager, most recently Hurt Machine (2011). Coleman has won three Shamus awards in the best detective novel category, and has been nominated twice for Edgar awards. His short fiction has been published widely, most recently in the collection Long Island Noir (2012). Coleman lives with his family on Long Island, where he teaches writing classes at Hofstra University.