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Broken Harbor (Dublin Murder Squad, Book 4) by [Tana French]

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Tana French

Broken Harbor (Dublin Murder Squad, Book 4) Kindle Edition

by Tana French (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

3,906 ratings

Book 4 of 6: Dublin Murder Squad

Editors' pick Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

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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.

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456 pages
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English
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Penguin Books
Publication date

July 24, 2012
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18 years and up
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, July 2012: In Tana French’s fourth novel, detective Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy and his rookie partner, Richie, are sent to a half-constructed, abandoned housing development called Broken Harbor to investigate the brutal murder of the Spain family. They expect an open-and-shut case, but it quickly gets complicated when Jenny Spain is found barely alive and the family’s circumstances come to light: hidden baby monitors, a strained mortgage brought on by the housing crisis, and the increasingly erratic signs of people in crisis. The tension of the investigation is intensified by the eerily abandoned estate and a creepy lead suspect. French fans will appreciate this new look at Scorcher, who was a minor character in Faithful Place; he shines as the successful but jaded detective with a troubled past. All told, French delivers a layered psychological thriller and satisfying whodunnit. She spins a masterly plot rife with tension and a haunting mood that rivals the best of the Gothic writers. --Heather Dileepan

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About the Author

Tana French grew up in Ireland, Italy, the United States and Malawi. She trained as an actor at Trinity College Dublin and has worked mainly in theatre. Her first novel, In the Woods, was published in 2007; it won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and Barry awards for Best First Novel and the IVCA Clarion Award for Best Fiction. In the Woods and her second novel, The Likeness, were both New York Times bestsellers. She lives in Dublin with her husband and daughter. Broken Harbour is her fourth novel. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Let’s get one thing straight: I was the perfect man for this case. You’d be amazed how many of the lads would have run a mile, given the choice—and I had a choice, at least at the start. A couple of them said it to my face: Sooner you than me, man. It didn’t bother me, not for a second. All I felt was sorry for them.

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.

Review

'The queen of Irish fiction ... This is a writer working at the height of her powers. As always with Tana French, you can expect humour, pathos and well-observed social commentary, but above all, a cracking story that keeps you guessing until the end' -- Sunday Independent 20120708 'Broken Harbour is a complex, well crafted psychological thriller as well as an exemplary dissection of the plight of the disappointed and desperate human wreckage washed up in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. As always, French's carefully wrought prose is a delight ... A hugely impressive and intelligent book, with writing to savour. It confirms French as the First Lady of Irish Crime.' -- Irish Independent 20120630 'Gripping' -- Image magazine 20120601 'Establishing atmosphere is one of French's many strengths. Gradually, an emotionally jolting story of love, obsession and madness is played out to incredible effect. Since her first novel, In The Woods, was larded with awards in 2007 French has garnered a huge legion of fans and they will be thrilled with this, her fourth and possibly best novel.' -- Daily Mail 20120614 Praise for Tana French -- : 20120614 'I've been enthusiastically telling everyone who will listen to read Tana French. Her novels are poignant, compelling, beautifully written and wonderfully atmospheric. Just start reading the first page. You'll see what I mean.' -- Harlan Coben 20120614 'Every holiday needs a good crime novel and French's skilful thrillers are tailor-made to terrify' -- Guardian 20120614 'A gripping, literate thriller laced with black humour' -- Irish Times 20120614 'If you're only going to buy one thriller this year, let it be Tana French's Faithful Place. Searing, utterly Dub, and very funny ... Tana French, Dublin author of international hits ... is a wonder. Just don't plan anything if you pick this up; you won't be able to put it down.' -- Evening Herald (Dublin) 20120614 'Gripping. Tana French's third novel hooks the reader from the outset; the characters are masterfully drawn, and the author's ear for Dublin dialogue is pitch-perfect.' -- Irish Independent 20120614 'The first thing that Ms. French does so well in Faithful Place is to inhabit fully a scrappy, shrewd, privately heartbroken middle-aged man. The second is to capture the Mackey family's long-brewing resentments in a way that's utterly realistic on many levels. Sibling rivalries, class conflicts, old grudges, adolescent flirtations and memories of childhood violence are all deftly embedded in this novel, as is the richly idiomatic Dublinese.' -- New York Times 20120614 'Ambitious and extraordinary' -- Washington Post 20120614 'Crime fiction at its best' -- InStyle magazine 20120614 'One of the most startling debuts I have seen any writer make: polished, assured, ferociously intelligent, at once very original and effortlessly engaged with the conventions of crime fiction' -- Sydney Morning Herald 20120614 'Nothing short of a masterpiece. French's first three thrillers were all brilliant but this is by far her best and reaches a level of spine-chilling, gripping moreishness that will leave readers open-mouthed with admiration. If I encounter a better novel than Broken Harbour before French publishes her fifth, I'll eat a milliner's shop full of hats.' --Sophie Hannah, Daily Express 20120617 --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

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

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Tana French

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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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3 star		11%
2 star		3%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Avid Reader

Could be half the length it is. Ended up being rather dull.

Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2018

Verified Purchase

This started as a five-star read for me. I loved the main characters's voice and it was punchy and dynamic. Then the author introduced the psycho sister and I kept expecting there to be a point to why she was even in the book. I read that the writer loves Donna Tarrt and think maybe she wanted to write a sort of relationship story? It just didn't work, bloating out the story with needless conversations (that can never be plain dialogue as we get endless descriptions before each person utters a word of facial expressions, thoughts, limb positions, looks being thrown this way and that). In all,this book needed to be edited in half. It is neither one thing or another.It doesn't have any feeling of suspense and soon you begin to dislike all the characters too. I loved the main character at the beginning of the book and by the end disliked him intensely.
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.

45 people found this helpful

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"Waiting for the dawn"

Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2018

Verified Purchase

Tana French's "Broken Harbor" begins as a typical police procedural. As usual, it features the Dublin Murder Squad. (There are now six novels in the series.) Detectives "Scorcher" Kennedy and rookie partner Richie Curran investigate a gruesome murder in a house in a once-promising suburban development that has fallen victim to recession (it's set in the late 0s, as the "Celtic Tiger" was declawed by recession). Scorcher knows the area, now known as Brianstown, as Broken Harbor. A father and his two children have been killed; his wife has been severely injured. The preliminary investigation turns up a series of holes in the shoddily built structure, and there are more baby monitors that would seem necessary.

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.

23 people found this helpful

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Anne C.

Best of the series by far.

Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2019

Verified Purchase

This book was incredible. I started out hating the narrator, but then he kind of grew on me. I think this was the author's intention, and it certainly worked on me.

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.

9 people found this helpful

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PBI

Tana French in top form

Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2020

Verified Purchase

For years, Mike "Scorcher" Kennedy has had the highest solve rate of anyone serving on the Dublin Murder Squad, but he hasn't been regarded as the golden boy he once was for quite a while, having bungled a high profile case with ties to a fellow officer. Still, he's kept his nose to the grindstone, kept his discipline and his drive, and now he's getting first crack at what is likely to be the biggest case to hit Dublin in some time. Patrick Spain, his daughter, and his son have all been murdered; his wife, Jenny, is clinging to life by the thinnest of threads.

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.

4 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

John M

Atmosphere and character, but over written, drawn out and a very poor plot

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 3, 2021

Verified Purchase

This novel has received good reviews and won awards, and at some 533 pages I was expecting a well plotted thriller with complexity to justify the length of the novel. However this is definitely not what this book is.
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.

One person found this helpful

Amy Reads Books

Far-fetched motive, disappointing reveal

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 16, 2019

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I love Tana French's lyrical writing style, it is so unusual to find in a crime / police procedural. However, unlike her other novel's I was disappointed by the plot of this one. I felt cheated by the amount of time spent on red herrings. I also found the killers motive totally baffling and unbelievable. French has written some amazingly original crime fiction, but this just felt rushed.

5 people found this helpful

Marguerite

Not as enthralling as others in the series, but I'll still be coming back for more

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 14, 2016

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This book started well, but for some reason it didn't hold my attention the way the previous ones in the series did (which, incidentally, can all easily be read stand-alone). I think partly it was Scorcher, the main detective, whose narrative voice I found rather stilted. Because it was told in the first person, his very tragic background was necessarily revealed rather passively, drip fed at strategic moments in the murder investigation, and I felt it lost a lot of the emotional impact it could have had if told differently. That's the problem with first person, obviously, you only get one POV and this really would have benefited from others - his partner Richie's, his sister, maybe even Fiona, the surviving victim's sister. And now I'm writing this, I think that was the problem for me - a hugely emotional book in terms of the murder, the motivation, the detective's back story and the embryonic relationship between the two detective partners - but it felt - well, flat. Which is a shame.

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.

6 people found this helpful

Claire

i read the first 20%. skipped to the end

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 28, 2019

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i had high hopes as i loved the first two books in the series, the third not so much but i persevered nonetheless . firstly i actually sighed when i realised who the main character was, after meeting him in the previous book where he presened as an odious prat. i read untl 20%, then skipped to the two final chapters where it all made sense and that was enough of him for me! it seemed to be so slow moving i could miss pages and yet nothing at all. real shame considering how much i have previously enjoyed these books and they are beautifully written.

3 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Far too much conversational dialogue for me.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 28, 2019

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I really had to force myself to complete this book. The plot was good and the characters brought to life well but the constant lengthy dialogue between any two/three characters wore me down and I had to put the book down without reading to the next chapter. Usually, for me, this is not a problem as I like to read to the end of each chapter before closing and then look forward to a fresh chapter but I just got too irritated with the unnecessary length of the conversations. Pity, because it could have been so good.

One person found this helpful