From The Desk Of Christopher O’Riley: Ken Bruen’s “Headstone”

Perhaps best known for the NPR series From The Top, musician Christopher O’Riley is far more in-tune with music than most of the world. Not only does he host and mentor young musicians, O’Riley also transcribes and arranges songs by Radiohead, Arcade Fire and more for the piano and, more recently, the cello. O’Riley has just released a new album with cellist Matt Haimovitz, Shuffle.Play.Listen. (Oxingale), a tribute to contemporary composers and some of the most modern musicians. Owing to his virtuosic abilities and interesting outlook, we invited O’Riley to guest edit magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

O’Riley: Undoubtedly my favourite author of noir. From Ken Bruen‘s Jack Taylor series (of which Headstone is the latest, finding our Jack ever more physically incapable of carrying through the day with senses and body parts intact) to his bad-cop/worse-cop South London Inspector Brant series (The White Trilogy is the concentrated best) to his artful noir collaborations with young American writer Jason Starr to A Fifth Of Bruen with, among other things, personally informed and heart-rending tales of Down’s syndrome and its clueless reactions/presuppositions in the wide world, he is a writer above all others in his ability to grab you and not let go.

Video after the jump.