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Tana French

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

by Tana French (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.2 14,323 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 Hunter, 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.

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

Review

“I’ve been enthusiastically telling everyone who will listen to read Tana French. She is, without a doubt, my favorite new mystery writer. Her novels are poignant, compelling, beautifully written, and wonderfully atmospheric. Just start reading the first page. You’ll see what I mean.”
—Harlan Coben, New York Times bestselling author

“Broken Harbor proves anew that [Tana French] is one of the most talented crime writers alive.”
—The Washington Post

“Ms. French has come to be regarded as one of the most distinct and exciting new voices in crime writing. She constructs her plots in a dreamlike, meandering fashion that seems at odds with genre's fixed narrative conventions...Ms. French undercuts expectations at every turn. The victims begin to look less like victims; the case starts to unravel and the lead detective makes compromises that could ruin him.”
--The Wall Street Journal

“Ms. French creates haunting, damaged characters who have been hit hard by some cataclysm...This may sound like a routine police procedural. But like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, this summer’s other dagger-sharp display of mind games, Broken Harbor is something more... she has irresistibly sly ways of toying with readers’ expectations”
--Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“So much of the pleasure inherent in reading these novels is in trying to figure out where things are going and being constantly surprised, not to mention thoroughly spooked. I predict Broken Harbor will be on more than one Best of 2012 list—it’s definitely at the top of mine.”
--Associated Press

“a tour de force.”
--Laura Miller, Salon.com

“In most crime novels, cood cops and decent people court tragedy by disobeying the rules of society. But the stories French tells reflect our own savage times: the real trouble starts when you play fair and do exactly as you’re told.”
--Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

“French's psychologically rich novels are so much more satisfying than your standard issue police procedural...French brilliantly evokes the isolation of a Gothic landscape out of the Brontes and transposes it to a luxury suburban development gone bust. The cause, of course, is Ireland's economic free fall — the Celtic Tiger turned needy cub — and, like all superior detective fiction, French's novels are as much social criticism as they are whodunit.”
–Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

“French ...[is] drawn not just to the who but also to the why — those bigger mysteries about the human weaknesses that drive somebody to such inhuman brutality. What really gives Broken Harbor its nerve-rattling force is her exploration of events leading up to the murders, rendered just as vividly as the detectives’ scramble to solve them.”
--Entertainment Weekly (A- rating)

“These four novels have instated Ms. French as one of crime fiction’s reigning grand dames — a Celtic tigress... It’s not the fashion in literary fiction these days to address such things as the psychological devastation that a fallout of the middle class can wreak on those who have never known anything else, and Ms. French does it with aplomb — and a headless sparrow and dozens of infrared baby monitors.”
--The Washington Times

“Broken Harbour is a novel, of course, but it's also a headline...it's good to see contemporary literature engaging a crisis that has had such an impact on the lives of so many. This is, in fact, what good literature does. It makes us look at our world and perhaps forces us to see what we have chosen to ignore.”
--Los Angeles Times

About the Author

Tana French is also 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.

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.

From AudioFile

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0072O00YI
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; Reprint edition (July 24, 2012)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 24, 2012
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3292 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 456 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #25,799 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #228 in Witch & Wizard Mysteries
- #588 in Murder
- #847 in Police Procedurals (Kindle Store)

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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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Mad Professah

Another brilliant outing from an atypical mystery writer

Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2013

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Tana French is one of my favorite mystery writers. I discovered her books after making my way through the entire catalog of Ian Rankin's Detective Inspector John Rebus novels which are set in and around Edinburgh, Scotland. French sets her novels in and around Dublin, Ireland. So, they are related in that they are both set in the United Kingdom.

French is somewhat notorious for her debut novel, In The Woods (2007) which violated one of the key rules of the murder mystery genre (I won't tell you which one!). Her other books, The Likeness (2008) and Faithful Place (2010), have also distinguished themselves for their horrific crime scenes, detailed and nuanced characters and shifting (although loosely linked) cast of detective protagonists. Her entire oeuvre is now commonly referred to as the Dublin Murder Squad series.

Her latest Dublin Murder Squad book is Broken Harbor and features Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy, who was a minor character in Faithful Place. In Broken Harbor we are presented Scorcher as the detective on the squad with the highest solve rate who has some skeletons in his closet and has recently suffered a professional setback when he gets a high-profile horrific case dumped in his lap: a report that an entire family of four (mom,dad,son,daughter) has been found dead in a nouveau riche suburb of Dublin.

Of course all is not what it seems at first blush. The first complicating factor is that the mom (Jenny Spain) is not dead, but instead is badly beaten and clinging to life despite multiple stab wounds. The second complicating factor is that Scorcher is given a new partner to work with, Richie Curran, who also happens to be a rookie detective who has managed to pull himself out of lower class squalor by his bootstraps to a hard-fought position on the Dublin Murder Squad. The third complicating factor is that the area in which the murders took place (which is now called "Broken Harbour" but used to be known by the less lyrical name of Brianstown) is also the place where Scorcher's own mentally imbalanced mother committed suicide by walking into the sea with his now-mentally ill youngest sister Dina.

Broken Harbor is the most procedural of French's novels to date. The details and rhythms of the investigation provide the backbone of the novel, as we follow Scorcher and Richie as they unearth how the domestic life of Pat and Jenny Spain unravelled in the weeks and months before the murders occurred. French's brilliance is demonstrated clearly in the slow reveal of the secrets buried in the past of Pat and Jenny's life together (they were high school sweethearts who bought their dream home in the suburbs and then were overwhelmed by debt and despair fueled by the economic collapse affecting the global economy and Ireland).

Some reviews have stated that they figured out who the murderer was relatively early in the book and felt that the book was longer than they felt it needed to be, but I would disagree. I was surprised by the revelation of who killed Pat Spain and his two little kids, and I was even more surprised by the other developments that occur in the book as well.

As usual with a French book, by the end of the book the reader is more highly invested in the future of the investigator than the investigation and Broken Harbor is no different in that regard. Unfortunately, it is unlikely any of her future books will include any more information about Scorcher or Richie.

However, happily we have reporting which indicates that French will actually allow one of the main characters from one of her previous books (Frankie Mackey from Faithful Place) to return in her next book, which is called The Secret Place.

I can't wait!

Title: Broken Harbor.
Author: Tana French.
Paperback: 464 pages.
Publisher: Viking Adult.
Date: July 24, 2012.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.75/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.

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king of chapter one

French's best book since In The Woods

Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2014

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I’ve been a fan of Tana French since her debut. And 2013’s Broken Harbor — her fourth Dublin Murder Squad book — is her best offering since that debut novel, In The Woods.

North of Dublin, in Brianstown — formerly a beach vacation spot called Broken Harbor, now one of the many disintegrating housing developments whose builders went belly up during the financial crash — there has been a brutal triple homicide. The two young Spain children have been smothered in their beds, their father has been stabbed to death, and their mother is in critical condition, having barely survived the apparent assault. Detective Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy and his promising young partner, Richie Curran, are sent to investigate.

While Kennedy initially suspects the father, Pat Spain, the case becomes impossible tangled as more facts to come to light: a series of odd break-ins that Jenny Spain kept from her husband, a mysterious animal in the attic that had become an obsession to the recently unemployed Pat; a stalker in an abandoned neighboring property; and Detective Kennedy’s own dark family history with Broken Harbor.

As the police procedural morphs into a psychological thriller, Detective Kennedy tries to make order out of the mess. In the end, he finds himself questioning the central tenets on which he has built his life: Do people get what they deserve? Or do things just “happen”?

As in the other Dublin Murder Squad books, the protagonist originally appeared as a supporting character in a previous book. Detective Kennedy originally appeared in 2010’s Faithful Place. And though the plot of Broken Harbor is tighter than in some of her previous books, it is really her characters that make French’s books pop. Which is why, to tell the truth, I wasn’t really looking forward to hearing from Scorcher over the course of an entire book. He’s not particularly likable in Faithful Place, nor is he particularly interesting. And honestly, he’s not much more likable here. But he is interesting. French does a fantastic job painting a picture of a man struggling to do the right thing, to tame a wild world that refuses to be tamed. “I’m the least fanciful guy around,” he says, “but on nights when I wonder whether there was any point to my day, I think about this: the first thing we ever did, when we started turning into humans, was draw a line across the cave door and say: Wild stays out. What I do is what the first men did. They built walls to keep back the sea. They fought the wolves for the hearth fire.”

Scorcher isn’t the only fascinating character though; the book is loaded with them, and I hope French returns to some of them in future books, particularly Richie Curran.

But in a book stuffed with great characters, the most vivid one is not a person at all. The economic crash that took down so many dream around the world hit Ireland particularly hard, and its presence hangs over the entire novel like a cigarette smoke, sinking into and staining everything. And while the book is not political in the least, it is easy to read it and identify the real-life people living under that strain now — a generation that played by the rules they were taught, that did what they were supposed to do, only to find that they had been sold a bill of goods and that they were now trapped. And it’s impossible not to feel anger at the people and the institutions and the politicians that fed them the lies only to abandon them.

Back to the book: On the down side, the writing does drag at points. It feels like French could have made the shift away from police procedural a little sooner and a little more smoothly, and the wrap up could have been tighter as well. But particularly in the middle section, the tension in Broken Harbor is exquisite. Throughout the book, the twists are numerous and believable. The characters are real and flawed and beautiful. And the story is heartbreaking and oh so human.

Well done, Ms. French. Highly recommended.

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Zualtaye

Promising

Reviewed in India on April 28, 2021

Verified Purchase

Only 4% into the book but I like this guy Mick Kennedy already

Cliente Amazon

Ottimo giallo, per niente banale, né nella trama, né nei personaggi

Reviewed in Italy on June 29, 2018

Verified Purchase

Ottima trama e personaggi molto ben tratteggiati. Ambientazione sempre dublinese. Quarto episodio della serie, con diversi protagonisti della Squadra Omicidi dublinese. Tana French sa veramente ordire trame intriganti, e la sua scrittura non è mai banale. Introspezione dei personaggi sempre presente. Può essere letto indipendentemente dagli altri della serie.

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Laura d. C.

Sorprendente final

Reviewed in Spain on December 9, 2017

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Libro que engancha y no puedes dejar de leer, como los otros de Tana French de la misma saga. Muy recomendables.

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Sue Painter

It will mess with your head!

Reviewed in France on February 14, 2017

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This is a real psychological thriller. Too involved to just be called a criminal thriller. The characters are beautifully written - love them or hate them - and it certainly gave me a lot of thinking about!

Mika T

Loving all stories in the series so far

Reviewed in Japan on September 30, 2019

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I felt it was the saddest story out of the 4 Dublin Murder series so far... The murder case and led up to it was sad enough, but Scorcher's history and background broke my heart! I really didn't like him when I was reading Faithful Place, but I'm so glad the author gave so many layers of human-ness to Scorcher in this book. I still wouldn't be his best friend if he was one of my classmates or colleagues, but I understood his struggle and logic, which adds so much value to him as a person than just me liking him.

Everyime I finish reading Tana French's novel, I feel so frustrated with myself for actually finishing it and the fact that I couldn't continue reading anymore! Which makes no sense at all, but her stories are so good it's un-putdownable and makes me wanna read forever. I'm so glad there are 2 more books to this series, but I'm scared what I'm gonna feel/do after finish reading the whole series! I need Tana French to write faster!

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