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I'm a huge fan of Tana French's books. Her previous three have been intense, lush tales where the fact she has occasionally felt constrained by the genre she's writing in hasn't mattered in the end the characters and the storytelling have been all-encompassing. So I'm sad to report that BROKEN HARBOUR is really rather ordinary crime fiction and never quite delivers what it promises. French's books are all up to now police procedurals, set in or around Dublin. Each one has had a different hero, although there are often familiar faces in the background. These heroes always seem to have a dark past which they are trying to leave behind and it's no exception here. Mick 'Scorcher' Kennedy is a man who prides himself on his professionalism and self-control. But his latest case takes him back to the coastal village of Broken Harbour, which stirs up childhood memories that he would prefer to forget. And the news of the murder hunt sends his sister Dina, who has serious mental health problems, off the rails. Mick and rookie colleague Richie investigate a murderous attack on a young family on one of the almost-abandoned ghost estates outside of Dublin. It looks like an open-and-shut case Pat Spain's perfect world appears to have fallen apart once he lost his job, so he has killed his children and tried to murder his wife Jenny. But the evidence doesn't add up, and there's the matter of the strange holes in the house wall and the wire netting nailed over the loft hatch
The central premise for this book the recession, the death of the Celtic tiger and the ghost estates that blight the Irish landscape is both topical and compelling. Except, Alan Glynn for one has done it better in his books. The book is hampered by the fact there's very little tension, not a lot in the way of plot twists (the ending won't come as much of a surprise) and there's not much psychology kicking around either. In fact, most of the characters are merely annoying. French presents us with her trademark vivid cameos, namely Dina and the Spain family's ghastly neighbours. But, oddly, she doesn't make us care about any of them, least of all Mick. And it's a novel that would have benefited from a tough edit not least to move the sluggish plot along and to hack out Mick's tendency to say 'old son' about three times a page. BROKEN HARBOUR isn't a bad book it's just a huge anti-climax from someone of French's pedigree. § Sharon Wheeler is a UK-based journalist, writer and lecturer.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, August 2012
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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