Broken Harbour by
Tana French
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
After playing a minor role in Faithful Place, Mike 'Scorcher' Kennedy is able to steal the spotlight and prove readers why he is the Squad's star detective. Assigned to work with, Kennedy picks up a brutal assault/murder over in Brianstown, colloquially known as Broken Harbour.
In Broken Harbour, Tana French's 4th novel in her Dublin Murder Squad Series, Mike ("Scorcher") Kennedy, who played a minor role in the previous book, Faithful Place,
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7... has been assigned a new partner, rookie Detective Richie Curran and given a new case to solve.
Patrick & Jenny Spain and their two small children had been brutally attacked in their home, in a decaying and unfinished housing development in Brianstown, formerly known as Broken Harbor, just outside Dublin The husband had been stabbed to death and the two children suffocated whilst the wife left barely alive.
There are two storylines - the present murder and the connection to Sorcher. It was the place that he use to spend his family holidays in the past and where his mother had committed suicide when he was a teenager.
Kennedy is a complex and complicated character. At first, I just couldn't connect with this guy. But as the story develops, you get to see under his "skin"....how his childhood shaped the person he became.
“It doesn't matter where you come from. There's nothing you can do about it, so don't waste your energy thinking about it. What matters is where you're going. And that, mate, is something you can control.”
You see his dedication and loyalty to his family, especially his mentally ill sister,. and the strong work ethics and sense of duty he has. He's a by-the-books detective and for him there is no such thing as the colour grey...it's black and white and he makes sure that his rookie partner knows that from the beginning...
“If you think you’re a success, you will be a success; if you think you deserve nothing but crap, you’ll get nothing but crap. Your inner reality shapes your outer one, every day of your life.”
Kennedy, as mentor to the rookie, is a things are black and white detective trying to educate Richie on his personal rules of investigation and interrogation.
by the end of the book, I actually liked him....felt as if I knew him really well...well, I thought I did until the author surprises me with a twisty cliff-hanger!!!
This is a character driven story, where the police procedures, the forensics, the investigation helps the character development. It's a story of family relationships, the yearning to belong.
“ “I remember this country back when I was growing up. We went to church, we ate family suppers around the table, and it would never even have crossed a kid’s mind to tell an adult to fuck off. There was plenty of bad there, I don’t forget that, but we all knew exactly where we stood and we didn’t break the rules lightly. If that sounds like small stuff to you, if it sounds boring or old-fashioned or uncool, think about this: people smiled at strangers, people said hello to neighbours, people left their doors unlocked and helped old women with their shopping bags, and the murder rate was scraping zero.”
A deep exploration of human emotions, loss, sadness, madness, fate..... set in a place that fits in with the crime and mystery....Brianstown is not a pretty place...it is isolated, bleak, barren, desolate where the wind blows relentlessly over the town and roiling waves that crash into the sand.
There is no sunshine or light here....the resolution to the murder mystery is gut-wrenching and heartbreaking.
After the disappointment in her previous book, Faithful Place, I was unsure if I wanted to continue with the series...but I am glad I did....because this was really a good addition.
And after 4 books, I have reached this conclusion.......Tana French's writing is absolutely brilliant....
“I have always been caught by the pull of the unremarkable, by the easily missed, infinitely nourishing beauty of the mundane.”
Her prose is brilliant, evocative and her characters and place are so vividly descriptive.
I am definetly going to continue with this series.
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