Broken Harbor

By Tana French

Completed on July 14, 2017

I’ll be honest here. I hated Scorcher Kennedy’s guts in Faithful Place. Compared to Mackey’s dry humor, Kennedy was a prick who always had a stick up his ass.

But Tana French sure knows how to swing you around! In what could be her most police procedural novel yet, she manages to get the reader to understand Mick Kennedy’s motivations and why he is the straightest cop in Murder for the last twenty years.

And then there’s the location. Making the location a character is a Tana French staple. In Broken Harbor, the harbor takes on a life of its own in her writing. It is bleak, unforgiving, and laid-bare. The sound of the sea, of the winds, the seagulls returning to their havens can drive you insane, almost turning this thriller into a horror story at times.

The book was a bit languorous at times, but it was all worth it for the reward of the climax. Even though I had anticipated as much, the reveal still came as a shock. Something in the way Miss French writes it brings heart to a murderer’s story.

A captivating read, to sum up!