{"id":2366,"date":"2012-12-12T09:46:29","date_gmt":"2012-12-12T14:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/?p=2366"},"modified":"2013-04-26T16:07:52","modified_gmt":"2013-04-26T20:07:52","slug":"book-review-broken-harbor-by-tana-french","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2012\/12\/book-review-broken-harbor-by-tana-french.html","title":{"rendered":"Book Review : Broken Harbor by Tana French"},"content":{"rendered":"

[amazon_link id=”0670023655″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]\"Broken[\/amazon_link]Title : Broken Harbor<\/strong>
\nAuthor : Tana French<\/strong>
\nGenre : Mystery\/Thriller<\/strong>
\nPublisher : Viking<\/strong>
\nPages : 450<\/strong>
\nSource : Publisher ARC<\/strong>
\nRating : 3.5\/5<\/strong><\/p>\n

Broken Harbor features Detective Mike \u201cScorcher\u201d Kennedy, who appeared in a minor role in Faithful Place \u2013 French continues to build upon her \u201cconnected\u201d people stories. Scorcher must investigate the murder of the Spain family \u2013 father, mother, 2 children in a new housing development in Dublin \u2013 Brianstown, or Broken Harbor as it is now known. Only the mother survives \u2013 barely. Along with his ongoing investigation, Scorcher must also deal with Dina, his mentally unhinged sister. Dina, deeply affected by a family tragedy makes several appearances in Scorcher\u2019s life, mostly at inopportune times.<\/p>\n

Tana French is in form here \u2013 her descriptions are lyrical, languid and detailed; all that you\u2019d want to know to get entrenched in the mystery. You get a feel for the Spains\u2019s life, their upwardly mobile, happy-does-it philosophy, so there is some pathos to this story, when it ends the way it does. The economy is in recession, and Pat was jobless. Broken Harbor is a promising new development now stalled and decaying, much like, it appears, the Spains marital relationship might have been.<\/p>\n

Scorcher and Robbie look into the Spains\u2019s personal lives, their friends, family and relationships, so there is some intrigue here. Jenny and\u00a0Pat seem to be sensible folk, she of a sunny disposition and he of measured restraint. Theirs has been a much looked up to relationship. Both, very much in love, were a part of a tight-knit friend\u2019s circle, a circle of people that have now scattered, leaving behind the residue of jealousy and a huffy parting of the ways that only comes with changing circumstances.<\/p>\n

Scorcher has a rookie partner, Richie Curran,\u00a0who comes from a blue-collared background and has carried over his mental baggage to his job. French gives us a flavor of this newly developing partnership and the nascent element of trust between the two. Scorcher himself is firing on all cylinders \u2013 keeping unearthly hours on the job, and spending the remaining trying to make sure he doesn\u2019t fly off the handle when baby-sitting Dina on one of her \u201coff\u201d episodes.<\/p>\n

For all her gorgeous word-play, I did not think that this book was on par with her previous work, mostly because of the lack of psychological intensity. Yes, we do get haunted memories (Scorcher\u2019s) and unnatural physical settings on the crime scene \u2013 the Spain home is set up with hastily set-up video cameras, as though to catch an intruder. Emotions factor in \u2013 jealousy, insecurity, envy, and red herrings abound. But I never truly got any insight into the Spain\u2019s lives from a psychological point of view, something which French excelled at in her previous books. Jenny and Pat\u2019s friends seemed a little flat and clich\u00e9d, and the reasoning for the crime just didn\u2019t seem believable. So when the conclusion came, I was not truly convinced – something that has never happened before with a French mystery.<\/p>\n

This is still a decent book as far as mystery-thrillers go, even if it is a let-down coming from Tana French. I still think she\u2019s a great writer though \u2013 it is not often that mysteries can read like literature. I will look forward to her next book. If you haven\u2019t read her yet, I recommend \u201cThe Likeness\u201d<\/a> and \u201cFaithful Place\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[amazon_link id=”0670023655″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][\/amazon_link]Title : Broken Harbor Author : Tana French Genre : Mystery\/Thriller Publisher : Viking Pages : 450 Source : Publisher ARC Rating : 3.5\/5 Broken Harbor features Detective Mike \u201cScorcher\u201d Kennedy, who appeared in a minor role in Faithful Place \u2013 French continues to build upon her \u201cconnected\u201d people stories. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[68,74,53,3,58,45,97,90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-68","category-3-5_star_rating","category-arc","category-books","category-crime","category-mystery","category-penguin_books","category-viking_books"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":1,"uagb_excerpt":"[amazon_link id=”0670023655″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ][\/amazon_link]Title : Broken Harbor Author : Tana French Genre : Mystery\/Thriller Publisher : Viking Pages : 450 Source : Publisher ARC Rating : 3.5\/5 Broken Harbor features Detective Mike \u201cScorcher\u201d Kennedy, who appeared in a minor role in Faithful Place \u2013 French continues to build upon her \u201cconnected\u201d people stories.…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2366"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2579,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2366\/revisions\/2579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}