Review: Broken Harbor by Tana French

A Mysterious Review of …

Broken Harbor by Tana French. A Dublin Murder Squad Mystery.

Review summary: This part psychological thriller, part police procedural is a solid, if flawed, entry in this series. Beautifully written, the story takes far too long to cover what is, in effect, a narrow, self-contained investigation with just a handful of characters, and concludes on an ambiguous note. (Click here for text of full review.)

Our rating:

Broken Harbor
Tana French
A Dublin Murder Squad Mystery
Viking (July 2012)

Publisher synopsis: Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy plays by the book and plays hard. That's what's made him the Murder squad's top detective — and that's what puts the biggest case of the year into his hands.

On one of the half-built, half-abandoned "luxury" developments that litter Ireland, Patrick Spain and his two young children are dead. His wife, Jenny, is in intensive care.

At first, Scorcher and his rookie partner, Richie, think it's going to be an easy solve. But too many small things can't be explained. The half dozen baby monitors, their cameras pointing at holes smashed in the Spains' walls. The files erased from the Spains' computer. The story Jenny told her sister about a shadowy intruder who was slipping past all the locks.

And Broken Harbor holds memories for Scorcher. Seeing the case on the news sends his sister Dina off the rails again, and she's resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family one summer at Broken Harbor, back when they were children.