Broken Harbor

Broken Harbor (I'll go with the American spelling), by Tana French, is an above-average police procedural that dovetails with both the recession in Ireland and the struggle with madness. Narrated by the chief investigator, it doesn't pull punches, as that character, Mick Kennedy, isn't a very nice fellow, but he's determined to get his man.

Kennedy, nicknamed "Scorcher," has a newbie as a partner, Richie Curran, who is trying to make the Dublin detective squad. Their first case is a triple-murder in a housing development in a place that was once called Broken Harbor. Kennedy used to summer there as a boy, but he holds bad memories of the place, as it is where his mother walked into the sea and never came back.

The housing development is one of those that was built on the promise of good times but has too many empty or half-completed houses. One of the families that bought in, the Spains, are the victims. The father and the two children are dead, the wife is nearly so. The first portion of the book goes into excruciating and fascinating detail on the forensics, giving it a CSI:Dublin feel to it. Soon enough Kennedy and Curran arrest the likely killer, but Curran has doubts, so they delve deeper. There will be a lot of time spent on what kind of animal was in the Spain's attic.

To further complicate things, Kennedy is visited by his mentally disturbed sister, Dina, which messes with his head. As Kennedy struggles to keep from becoming unglued, he wonders whether he can trust his partner.

Once I had gotten use to Kennedy's voice, which is pretty harsh, I settled in to enjoy the book. Kennedy is driven, perhaps obsessively so, to look at things in black and white: "I have always loved simplicity. With you, everything's black and white, Richie had said, like an accusation; but the truth is that almost every murder case is, if not simple, capable of simplicity, and that this is not only necessary but breathtaking, that if there are miracles then this is one. In these rooms, the world's vast hissing tangle of shadows burns away, all its treacherous grays are honed to the stark purity of a bare blade, two-edged: cause and effect, good and evil. To me, these rooms are beautiful. I go into them the way a boxer goes into the ring: intent, invincible, home."

Over the course of the book, Kennedy, perhaps in spite of himself, reveals his character, enriching the book beyond the nuts and bolts of the mystery. I particularly liked this passage: "In that moment I thought of Broken Harbor: of my summer haven, awash with the curves of water and the loops of seabirds and the long falls of silver-gold light through sweet air; of muck and craters and raw-edged walls where human beings had beat their retreat. For the first time in my life, I saw the place for what it was: lethal, shaped and honed for destruction as expertly as the trap lurking in the Spains' attic The menace of it left me blinded, sang like hornets in the bones of my skull." Lovely.

I recommend Broken Harbor to anyone who enjoys a crackling good mystery that is literary as well as a puzzle.