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![Broken Harbor (Dublin Murder Squad, Book 4) by [Tana French]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41u0VqirVuL._SY346_.jpg)
Broken Harbor (Dublin Murder Squad, Book 4) Kindle Edition
Tana French (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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From Tana French, author of the forthcoming novel The Searcher, a New York Times bestselling novel that “proves anew that [Tana French] is one of the most talented crime writers alive” (The Washington Post).
“Required reading for anyone who appreciates tough, unflinching intelligence and ingenious plotting.” —The New York Times
Mick “Scorcherˮ Kennedy is the star of the Dublin Murder Squad. He plays by the books and plays hard, and thatʼs how the biggest case of the year ends up in his hands.
On one of the half-abandoned “luxuryˮ developments that litter Ireland, Patrick Spain and his two young children have been murdered. His wife, Jenny, is in intensive care. At first, Scorcher thinks itʼs going to be an easy solve, but too many small things canʼt be explained: the half-dozen baby monitors pointed at holes smashed in the Spainsʼ walls, the files erased from the familyʼs computer, the story Jenny told her sister about a shadowy intruder slipping past the houseʼs locks. And this neighborhood—once called Broken Harbor—holds memories for Scorcher and his troubled sister, Dina: childhood memories that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Books
- Publication dateJuly 24, 2012
- Reading age18 years and up
- File size3226 KB
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Some of them aren’t wild about the high-profile gigs, the high-stakes ones—too much media crap, they say, and too much fallout if you don’t get a solve. I don’t do that kind of negativity. If you put your energy into thinking about how much the fall would hurt, you’re already halfway down. I focus on the positive, and there’s plenty of positive there: you can pretend you’re above this stuff, but everyone knows the big cases are the ones that bring the big promotions. Give me the headline-grabbers and you can keep your drug-dealer stabbings. If you can’t take the heat, stay in uniform.
Some of the lads can’t handle kids, which would be fair enough except that, forgive me for asking, if you can’t cope with nasty murders then what the hell are you doing on the Murder Squad? I bet Intellectual Property Rights would love to have your sensitive arse onboard. I’ve handled babies, drownings, rape-murders and a shotgun decapitation that left lumps of brain crusted all over the walls, and I sleep just fine, as long as the job gets done. Someone has to do it. If that’s me, then at least it’s getting done right.
Because let’s get another thing clear, while we’re at it: I am bloody good at my job. I still believe that. I’ve been on the Murder Squad for ten years, and for seven of those, ever since I found my feet, I’ve had the highest solve rate in the place. This year I’m down to second, but the top guy got a run of slam dunks, domestics where the suspect practically slapped the cuffs on his own wrists and served himself up on a plate with applesauce. I pulled the tough ones, the nobody-seen-nothing junkie-on-junkie drudgery, and I still scored. If our superintendent had had one doubt, one single doubt, he could have pulled me off the case any time he wanted. He never did.
Here’s what I’m trying to tell you: this case should have gone like clockwork. It should have ended up in the textbooks as a shining example of how to get everything right. By every rule in the book, this should have been the dream case.
* * *
The second it hit the floor, I knew from the sound that it was a big one. All of us did. Your basic murder comes straight to the squad room and goes to whoever’s next in the rota, or, if he’s out, to whoever happens to be around; only the big ones, the sensitive ones that need the right pair of hands, go through the Super so he can pick his man. So when Superintendent O’Kelly stuck his head around the door of the squad room, pointed at me, snapped, “Kennedy, my office,” and vanished, we knew.
I flipped my jacket off the back of my chair and pulled it on. My heartbeat had picked up. It had been a long time, too long, since one of these had come my way. “Don’t go anywhere,” I said to Richie, my partner.
“Oooo,” Quigley called from his desk, mock horrified, shaking a pudgy hand. “Is Scorcher in the shit again? I never thought we’d see the day.”
“Feast your eyes, old son.” I made sure my tie was straight. Quigley was being a little bitch because he was next up in the rota. If he hadn’t been a waste of space, O’Kelly might have let the case go to him.
“What’ve you done?”
“Shagged your sister. I brought my own paper bags.”
The lads snickered, which made Quigley purse up his lips like an old woman. “That’s not funny.”
“Too close to the bone?”
Richie was openmouthed and practically hopping off his chair with curiosity. I flipped my comb out of my pocket and gave it a quick run through my hair. “Am I good?”
“Lick-arse,” Quigley said, through his sulk. I ignored him.
“Yeah,” Richie said. “You’re grand. What . . . ?”
“Don’t go anywhere,” I repeated, and went after O’Kelly.
My second hint: he was up behind his desk, with his hands in his trouser pockets, rolling up and down on the balls of his feet. This case had pumped up his adrenaline enough that he wouldn’t fit in his chair. “You took your time.”
“Sorry, sir.”
He stayed where he was, sucking his teeth and rereading the call sheet on his desk. “How’s the Mullen file coming along?”
I had spent the last few weeks putting together a file for the Director of Public Prosecutions on one of those tricky drug dealer messes, making sure the little bastard didn’t have a single crack to slime through. Some detectives think their job’s done the second the charges are filed, but I take it personally when one of my catches wriggles off the hook, which they seldom do. “Good to go. Give or take.”
“Could someone else finish it up?”
“Not a problem.”
He nodded and kept reading. O’Kelly likes you to ask—it shows you know who’s boss—and since he is in fact my boss, I have no problem rolling over like a good little doggie when it makes things run more smoothly. “Did something come in, sir?”
“Do you know Brianstown?”
“Haven’t heard of it.”
“Neither had I. It’s one of those new places; up the coast, past Balbriggan. Used to be called Broken Bay, something.”
“Broken Harbor,” I said. “Yeah. I know Broken Harbor.”
“It’s Brianstown now. And by tonight the whole country’ll have heard of it.”
I said, “This is a bad one.”
O’Kelly laid one heavy palm on the call sheet, like he was holding it down. He said, “Husband, wife and two kids, stabbed in their own home. The wife’s headed for hospital; it’s touch and go. The rest are dead.”
We left that for a moment, listening to the small tremors it sent through the air. I said, “How did it come in?”
“The wife’s sister. They talk every morning, but today she couldn’t get through. That got her het up enough that she got in her car and headed out to Brianstown. Car’s in the driveway, lights are on in broad daylight, no one’s answering the door, she rings the uniforms. They break the door down and surprise, surprise.”
“Who’s on scene?”
“Just the uniforms. They took one look and figured they were out of their depth, called it straight in.”
“Beautiful,” I said. There are plenty of morons out there who would have spent hours playing detective and churning the whole case to shit, before they admitted defeat and called in the real thing. It looked like we had lucked into a pair with functioning brains.
“I want you on this. Can you take it?”
“I’d be honored.”
“If you can’t drop everything else, tell me now and I’ll put Flaherty on this one. This takes priority.”
Flaherty is the guy with the slam dunks and the top solve rate. I said, “That won’t be necessary, sir. I can take it.”
“Good,” O’Kelly said, but he didn’t hand over the call sheet. He tilted it to the light, inspecting it and rubbing a thumb along his jawline. “Curran,” he said. “Is he able for this?”
Young Richie had been on the squad all of two weeks. A lot of the lads don’t like training in the new boys, so I do it. If you know your job, you have a responsibility to pass the knowledge on. “He will be,” I said.
“I can stick him somewhere else for a while, give you someone who knows what he’s at.”
“If Curran can’t take the heat, we might as well find out now.” I didn’t want someone who knew what he was at. The bonus of newbie wrangling is that it saves you a load of hassle: all of us who’ve been around a while have our own ways of doing things, and too many cooks etcetera. A rookie, if you know how to handle him, slows you down a lot less than another old hand. I couldn’t afford to waste time playing after-you-no-after-you, not on this one.
“You’d be the lead man, either way.”
“Trust me, sir. Curran can handle it.”
“It’s a risk.”
Rookies spend their first year or so on probation. It’s not official, but that doesn’t make it any less serious. If Richie made a mistake straight out of the gate, in a spotlight this bright, he might as well start clearing out his desk. I said, “He’ll do fine. I’ll make sure he does.”
O’Kelly said, “Not just for Curran. How long since you had a big one?”
His eyes were on me, small and sharp. My last high-profile one went wrong. Not my fault—I got played by someone I thought was a friend, dropped in the shit and left there—but still, people remember. I said, “Almost two years.”
“That’s right. Clear this one, and you’re back on track.”
He left the other half unspoken, something dense and heavy on the desk between us. I said, “I’ll clear it.”
O’Kelly nodded. “That’s what I thought. Keep me posted.” He leaned forward, across the desk, and passed me the call sheet.
“Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down.”
“Cooper and the Tech Bureau are on their way.” Cooper is the pathologist. “You’ll need manpower; I’ll have the General Unit send you out a bunch of floaters. Six do you, for now?”
“Six sounds good. If I need more, I’ll call in.”
O’Kelly added, as I was leaving, “And for Jesus’ sake do something about Curran’s gear.”
“I had a word last week.”
“Have another. Was that a bloody hoodie he had on him yesterday?”
“I’ve got him out of runners. One step at a time.”
“If he wants to stay on this case, he’d better manage a few giant steps before you hit the scene. The media’ll be all over this like flies on shite. At least make him keep his coat on, cover up his tracksuit or whatever he’s honored us with today.”
“I’ve got a spare tie in my desk. He’ll be fine.” O’Kelly muttered something sour about a pig in a tuxedo.
On my way back to the squad room I skimmed the call sheet: just what O’Kelly had already told me. The victims were Patrick Spain, his wife, Jennifer, and their kids, Emma and Jack. The sister who had called it in was Fiona Rafferty. Under her name the dispatcher had added, in warning capitals, NB: OFFICER ADVISES CALLER IS HYSTERICAL.
* * *
Richie was up out of his seat, bobbing from foot to foot like he had springs in his knees. “What . . . ?”
“Get your gear. We’re going out.”
“I told you,” Quigley said to Richie.
Richie gave him the wide-eyed innocents. “Did you, yeah? Sorry, man, wasn’t paying attention. Other stuff on my mind, know what I mean?”
“I’m trying to do you a favor here, Curran. You can take it or leave it.” Quigley’s wounded look was still on.
I threw my coat on and started checking my briefcase. “Sounds like a fascinating chat you two were having. Care to share?”
“Nothing,” Richie said promptly. “Shooting the breeze.”
“I was just letting young Richie know,” Quigley told me, self-righteously. “Not a good sign, the Super calling you in on your own. Giving you the info behind our Richie’s back. What does that say about where he stands on the squad? I thought he might want to have a little think about that.”
Quigley loves playing Haze the Newbie, just like he loves leaning on suspects one notch too hard; we’ve all done it, but he gets more out of it than most of us do. Usually, though, he has the brains to leave my boys alone. Richie had pissed him off somehow. I said, “He’s going to have plenty to think about, over the next while. He can’t afford to get distracted by pointless crap. Detective Curran, are we good to go?”
“Well,” Quigley said, tucking his chins into each other. “Don’t mind me.”
“I never do, chum.” I slid the tie out of my drawer and into my coat pocket under cover of the desk: no need to give Quigley ammo. “Ready, Detective Curran? Let’s roll.”
“See you ’round,” Quigley said to Richie, not pleasantly, on our way out. Richie blew him a kiss, but I wasn’t supposed to see it, so I didn’t.
It was October, a thick, cold, gray Tuesday morning, sulky and tantrumy as March. I got my favorite silver Beemer out of the car pool—officially it’s first come first served, but in practice no Domestic Violence kid is going to go near a Murder D’s best ride, so the seat stays where I like it and no one throws burger wrappers on the floor. I would have bet I could still navigate to Broken Harbor in my sleep, but this wasn’t the day to find out I was wrong, so I set the GPS. It didn’t know where Broken Harbor was. It wanted to go to Brianstown.
Richie had spent his first two weeks on the squad helping me work up the file on the Mullen case and re-interview the odd witness; this was the first real Murder action he’d seen, and he was practically shooting out of his shoes with excitement. He managed to hold it in till we got moving. Then he burst out with, “Are we on a case?”
“We are.”
“What kind of case?”
“A murder case.” I stopped at a red, pulled out the tie and passed it over. We were in luck: he was wearing a shirt, even if it was a cheapo white thing so thin I could see where his chest hair should have been, and a pair of gray trousers that would have been almost OK if they hadn’t been a full size too big. “Put that on.”
He looked at it like he had never seen one before. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
For a moment I thought I was going to have to pull over and do it for him—the last time he had worn one had probably been for his confirmation—but he managed it in the end, give or take. He tilted the sun-visor mirror to check himself out. “Looking sharp, yeah?”
“Better,” I said. O’Kelly had a point: the tie made bugger-all difference. It was a nice one, maroon silk with a subtle stripe in the weave, but some people can wear the good stuff and some just can’t. Richie is five foot nine on his best day, all elbows and skinny legs and narrow shoulders—he looks about fourteen, although his file says he’s thirty-one—and call me prejudiced, but after one glance I could have told you exactly what kind of neighborhood he comes from. It’s all there: that too-short no-color hair, those sharp features, that springy, restless walk like he’s got one eye out for trouble and the other one out for anything unlocked. On him, the tie just looked nicked. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B0072O00YI
- Publisher : Penguin Books; Reprint edition (July 24, 2012)
- Publication date : July 24, 2012
- Language : English
- File size : 3226 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 456 pages
- Lending : Not Enabled
- Best Sellers Rank: #28,653 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #145 in Witch & Wizard Thrillers
- #324 in Witch & Wizard Mysteries
- #372 in International Mystery & Crime (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Tana French is the author of In the Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, The Secret Place, and The Trespasser. Her books have won awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards, the Los Angeles Times Award for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Dublin with her family.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2018
Top reviews from the United States
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I thought I was going to be a huge Tana French fan at the beginning of the book but now have no desire to read more of her books. Too drawn out. She needs a better editor.
The detectives go through the routine (Scorcher tells the tale in the first person) and turn up a promising suspect. And than the book spirals into the darkness. The descent begins when Richie and Scorcher have different ideas as to who might be guilty.
In addition Scorcher has a bipolar younger sister, Dina. And she triggers Kennedy's and the tale's, descent, as during the course of the book we learn that Scorcher and Dina have a history there. Dina tells Scorcher he never should have taken the case, and as we see, he probably shouldn't have.
The book's showpiece is a chapter-long confession sequence that is not for the weak of heart, or stomach. It's a horror show.
NOTES AND ASIDES: Do I really have to say more? If you don't like unpleasant books and characters, stay well away. If you like brilliantly conceived and written novels, order it. And especially keep in mind this is not a routine mystery. Well not just, anyhow.
Scorcher's breaking in a new partner, still wet-behind-the-ears Richie Curran, but he's optimistic - and when he's tapped to investigate the Spain killings out in the half-built, recession-plagued luxury development at Broken Harbor, it looks like this is his chance to get back on top. While brutal, the crime seems straightforward, and through dogged, intense work, Kennedy and Curran find themselves clicking like a pair of longtimers, and making steady progress.
But troubling questions remain: why are there half a dozen cameras pointed at holes that have been smashed in the Spains' walls? Why was the family computer wiped? Who is the mysterious stranger that neighbors have seen lurking in the estate? And is he the same person Jenny told her sister had been sneaking in out of her home? Kennedy and Curran are working round the clock, and whether its the long hours, the horror of the crime, or something else, Scorcher's own tragic family connection to Broken Harbor begins to influence the case, and soon nothing is for certain.
"Broken Harbor" is the fourth of Tana French's loosely-connected Dublin Murder Squad books, and we have met Scorcher Kennedy before - he was Frank Mackey's foil in "Faithful Place". Mackey didn't have a high opinion of Kennedy, but all of French's books are written from individual perspectives, and those perspectives are frequently biased. Behind his own eyes, Kennedy's a man who recognized his limitations years ago, and while his self-help lingo and seize-the-day mentality grate on some, they're tools he uses to compensate for what he perceives as his own average abilities. There are smarter, cleverer cops out there, but no one outworks or out-hustles Scorcher Kennedy.
The preceding volume, "Faithful Place", was kinetic and a bit less thoughtful than we're used to seeing from French, but while "Broken Harbor" cranks up the pace - fully a third of the book takes place in the first day of the investigation - it also marks a return to the deeper waters in which the author usually swims. There are things Kennedy believes he's conquered - things he believes he's moved beyond - but like all of Tana French's protagonists, he is mistaken in his belief that the past is done with him. "Broken Harbor" shows us how a family in crisis can create a maelstrom of tragedy, and the way that a succession of small moments that can build to something large and terrible.
The mystery of who killed the Spain family was intense and riveting. I was completely immersed from about page 50 or so, and I could. Not. STOP. I seriously read this entire book in two days because I couldn't put it down. It was incredible.
This is by far the best book of this entire series, in my opinion. The denouement ended the story before I might've liked, but I suppose we can all imagine what happened next. (view spoiler)
I'm already beginning The Secret Place and I don't like it nearly as much so far. I'm listening to the audiobook and I really do not like multiple narrators. Irrelevant to this review, I guess, except to say that Broken Harbor will probably remain my favorite title in this series.
5 full stars and a spot on my favorites shelf. Pretty unusual for a 4th in series AND a murder mystery to land there, so know that this book is something special.
Top reviews from other countries

The basic story is of a family of four brutally and violently murdered with just the wife surviving with terrible injuries. The police procedural aspects are detailed to the point that over half the book describes the musings and discussions of the two detectives and their investigation to the point of tedium.
There are really very few characters involved in the story and the solution involves some strange and not very credible behaviour by a few of the characters. However, it is all explained and mused over at such great length as if the author is trying us that by going into great and repetitive detail to explain behaviours and motivations the reader will be persuaded. Unfortunately I wasn't. The main murder plot is really little more than a long drawn out shaggy dog story.
The story is set in post-boom Ireland where unemployment has risen and housing projects started during the boom times remain unfinished. It therefore has a depressing air to it. This together with morals and duties of a detective and the backstory of the main character try to fill the thinness of the plot with atmosphere, past tragedy, and a study of an Ireland in economic decline. To some extent the book is successful in this and redeems itself. However, as a thriller with an exciting and clever plot it utterly fails. If this is what you seek, look elsewhere.


In terms of the crime and the motivation and the end result - yes, I really enjoyed how that was unravelled though I did feel it could have been shorter. And as before, I loved the settings, the interaction of the environment (physical and economic) with the key players and their motivation. So I'll be coming back for more.

