Broken Harbor by Tana French Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“I have always been caught by the pull of the unremarkable, by the easily missed, infinitely nourishing beauty of the mundane.”- Broken Harbor, Tana French

In Broken Harbour, a ghost estate outside Dublin – half-built, half-inhabited, half-abandoned – two children and their father are dead. The mother is on her way to intensive care. Scorcher Kennedy is given the case because he is the Murder Squad’s star detective. At first he and his rookie partner, Richie, think this is a simple one: Pat Spain was a casualty of the recession, so he killed his children, tried to kill his wife Jenny, and finished off with himself. But there are too many inexplicable details and the evidence is pointing in two directions at once.

Scorcher’s personal life is tugging for his attention. Seeing the case on the news has sent 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 Harbour, back when they were children. The neat compartments of his life are breaking down, and the sudden tangle of work and family is putting both at risk . . .

I was putting off reading this book. I know, I know, I need to set aside a certain amount of time- like a week or at least four days- to reading Tana French's work. But I was disappointed with Faithful Place, if you'll recall, and it was a bad month to begin with so I really didn't want to be brought down by even my go-to mystery writer. So I left this book until the last 3 or four days of April, hoping I'd finish it by May.

I don't know why I was so worried about it. Broken Harbor (is it Broken Harbor or Harbour? It's odd to me that the spelling was Americanized, but none of the words were) ended up being another literary police procedural, the kind I expected from The Dublin Murder Squad. 

As usual, we have a brand new main character in the form of Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy. And as usual, he's new and interesting and so different from Rob Ryan or Cassie Maddox or Frank Mackey or Antoinette Conway (remember, I read The Trespasser before I read the rest of the series). I love how French isn't afraid to give each of her characters different views or opinions regarding something; I think that's what ends up making them all feel like individuals. So many authors give all their characters the same opinions on everything (ones that usually mirror the writer's) and I feel like all their characters just blend together. I know that Cassie Maddox's views on, let's say land development because it fits here, probably differ dramatically from Mick Kennedy's. It also makes it harder to guess what the author's actual opinions are, which I like. 

And the side characters were particularly fabulous in this book. Now, I really want a spinoff series following the crime scene techs. French could have so much fun with it- we could have Dr Cooper, Larry (who might have taken Cooper's spot in being my favorite side character), Sophie (who appears in a couple of the other books), Kieran, hell, even Tom the wilderness guy would be great- who knows what shit that guy gets up to. I also think it would be great if she wrote a book that would be about O'Kelly back when he was a rookie detective and some case that he got himself into. That would be a really great book. See, here's the thing about Tana French- her characters, even the side ones, always grab me. She has such a great eye for detail and ear for dialogue and everything that makes a great writer, especially a great mystery writer. 

I enjoyed the actual mystery, too. It was fascinating and sad, following this family as they spiraled downward into economic ruin and madness, even if, as Kennedy said, they did everything right. And there's something about the mysteries that she writes that just capture my imagination. Like in this case, I've always been interested in the effects of something, like poverty, has on the human psyche. With the exception of Faithful Place, the mysteries just stay with me. 

And I love the Irishness of what she writes. While I don't yet understand the subtle nuances of each different accent (and for such a small country there's tons of them), I can still hear the different ways everyone speaks practically in my ear (and does anyone else imagine that Cooper speaks in this flat, kinda nasally voice devoid of all accent?). Her love for her country seems evident, even though she often criticizes it. Her writing is just fabulous too. A common criticism is that her descriptions are too wordy, but honestly, when all her main characters are detectives- typically observant people who notice every little detail- it makes sense to go into detail on everything. I think Broken Harbor was her funniest book so far, too. I envy how effortlessly French can make banter sound, and several times I actually found myself laughing out loud. I think Kennedy's my second favorite of her protagonists (below Cassie, but just above Ryan if not on the same level)

What else can I say? Tana French has not disappointed me again. I would recommend Broken Harbor in particular to anyone looking for a book about desperation and keeping up with the Jones and everything along those lines. It would be a crime to put Tana French in a box labelled "mystery writers". Because what she writes is so much more. As much as I liked the one Jilliane Hoffman book I read of hers, she's not on the same level as Tana French. One's a really great crime writer, and the other is a literary fiction writer whose books happen to be about detectives.

8.5-9 out of 10