Broken Harbour: Tana French

Tana French is an American-born actress and author who has been living in Ireland for the last 27 years. She is the creator of a critically-acclaimed series of crime novels based around the work of the fictional “Dublin Murder Squad”. All of the novels in the series are written from a first-person viewpoint, with a different narrator featured in each novel. Each novel is an expert combination of mystery story and psychological thriller.

There’s no need to read any of the novels before any other, as they are all pretty-much stand-alone, although there are some common characters and shared history between them. However, if you do want to start with the first of the series, that’s In the Woods, followed by The Likeness and then Faithful Place.

Broken Harbour is the fourth book in the series, and to my mind, the best so far. It is really harrowing, and absolutely gripping.

It’s based on the viewpoint of Matthew Kennedy, a forty-ish career police officer who has had a great record in solving high-profile crimes, but who has been sidelined for some years for reasons of internal politics. He is delighted, therefore, to be called in to tackle a major crime which will hit the headlines–a shocking incident in which several members of a family have been found dead; two young children still in their beds, the mother and father in the kitchen, each with multiple stab wounds. The father is dead. The mother, though terribly wounded, turns out to still be breathing and is rushed into intensive care, and for a long time is unable to be interviewed.

The family were living on a newly-built estate more than an hour’s drive from Dublin. Alas, the estate was thrown up quickly by a greedy developer who went broke when the recession hit; many houses are unfinished, and all have construction problems. Living there is a trap for many young couples hoping to get into the housing market. The breadwinner of the dead family had been out of work for months, having lost his job in the same recession. They have struggled on, but living in this remote estate has isolated them from the support group of family and friends.

The immediate assumption, then, is that this is a murder-suicide case where the husband has snapped and tried to take his whole family with him. But, of course, that simple though tragic explanation turns out to be far too simple. The reality is much more complex.

There are many strange aspects to the case. Why are rough holes knocked into the plaster walls all over the house, despite how neat, tidy and well-looked after the rest of the interior has been kept? Why is there a massive animal trap set up in the attic? Why did the wife tell her sister she was convinced a stranger had been coming regularly into their house despite locks and a working alarm system? Why has the family’s computer been wiped, and by whom?

The explication of the case unearths not one but three deep psychological dramas or obsessions; not to mention opening up the wounds of long-buried family issues for Kennedy himself, who has to deal with his own mentally-unstable sister while continuing to do his job and act as a mentor for his newly-appointed young partner.

The solution to the mystery, when it comes, is shattering and heart-breaking. The light it throws on Ireland’s economic boom and bust is a fierce one.

Highly recommended.

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