Broken Harbor by Tana French

I did a short internet search for an inkling on who her next novel will focus on--none of the narrators from the previous novels made any cameos in this one. And man, if the next one features that slimy greaseball Quigley I'm jumping ship on this series. On the surface the Dublin Murder Squad series (as Amazon has started calling it) is a crime mystery series; each book features a different narrator whose life usually goes to hell in a hand basket over the course of one twisty, complicated investigation. The end of the novel isn't your typical, everything-tied-up-in-a-bow, 'happy' ending either.

In this latest installment, Broken Harbor, Detective Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy, who had a brief appearance in the previous novel, is the narrator. Broken Harbor is so named for the seaside village Kennedy's family used to vacation in until one summer when tragedy found them there and changed their lives forever.

Kennedy is called to the new development, Brianstown (the seaside shanty formerly known as Broken Harbor), when a young family is massacred in their home there. He knows before he gets there that it will be a brutal crime scene. The father, Patrick Spain, is dead; his wife, Jennifer, is near death, while their two children lie dead upstairs in their beds. When Kennedy arrives with his rookie partner, Richie, and they take a quick walk through the bloody crime scene, the brutal murders take on a bizarre and bewildering overtone. The home's walls are riddled with holes, their sitting room is a damp, dark wreck, and throughout the house are several baby monitors and cameras trained on several holes in the walls. It's clear that something strange was haunting this family.

Meanwhile, the Brianstown development is a broken, isolated, desolate place abandoned in the wake of the economic depression. Homes are empty, others are in various states of arrested construction, and if the Spains' home is indicative of the state of the other occupied homes, well, it's just a matter of time before they start falling in on themselves. In the wake of the murders breaking in the news, Mick's sister, Dina, for whom life is 'difficult' (a euphemism for 'crazy as a bag of cats'), skids off the rails into one of her annual melt downs, and Mick is forced to juggle both her and the case.

As the investigation progresses, it's revealed that whatever was going on in the Spain home in the months leading up to the massacre was bizarre, strange, and may have led to a breakdown in one or both adults living there. Whatever happened, the lone survivor is determined to downplay the break-ins, the holes in the walls, the phantom animal her husband was chasing, and the stresses his unemployment placed on them. In addition Mick struggles with a partner who's keeping something from him while his personal life threatens to spin out of control, thanks to his sister's mental breakdown, to the detriment of himself, the case, his career, and his family.

This is one tension filled, terrifying, suspenseful, perplexing (just what the hell was scrabbling around in the Spains' walls and how does Emma's godfather figure into this tragedy and what has Rich stumbled upon that he's holding back from Mick?) and dark mystery. French has a penchant for portraying damaged characters with messy personal lives just as a perfect storm of sorts coalesces to rip apart their personal and professional lives. One knows this story won't end well for anyone involved. I highly recommend this novel for mystery lovers looking for something a little different from your typical crime mystery, and this one is a must read for any Tana French fan.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

How To Be A Heroine: Or What I've Learned From Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis

I feel as if I could write a book subtitled "What I've Learned From Reading Too Much" except all my lessons would be culled from Greek mythology, the Babysitters' Club, the lives of British queens, crime mysteries, suspense thrillers and celebrity and entertainment gossip. I first ran across How To Be A Heroine by Samantha Ellis in an ad in BookPage. The title sounded intriguing and once I looked it up on Amazon, I was in for reading it. It reminds me of the literacy autobiography writing assignment that I had in one of my English composition classes in college--except this is the literacy autobiography on steroids. The premise of this book is that the author revisits the seminal texts that she read in her youth by examining the lessons and impressions of the novels that she had upon her first readings when she was younger. Ellis has then re-read the novels as an adult specifically for the writing of her own book to see if the novels hold up to her original i

Heat Lightning by John Sandford

I'd previously read John Sandford's first Virgil Flowers novel, Dark of the Moon , a few years back and found it to be a quick, well written read. Recently I discovered he has since written three more Flowers titles and decided to start with the second title and read through to the fourth and most recent one. Heat Lightning is the second Flowers installment. The darkness of the crimes committed that must be solved in the novel are leavened by the lighter presentation of Flowers and the story. It works well together--a dark crime doesn't always need dark prose to back it up. Virgil Flowers is Lucas Davenport's go to man in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension when there's a sensitive, tough or otherwise puzzling case to solve. Flowers has a high clearance rate and can often turn around a case in about a week. This particular case is especially perplexing with quite a few red herrings thrown into the mix to throw everyone--Flowers and the reader in

The Whisperers by John Connolly

If there was one thing Jimmy didn't care for, it was competition, ... There were some exceptions to that rule: he was rumored to have a sweet deal with the Mexicans, but he wasn't about to try to reason with the Dominicans, or the Columbians, or the bikers, or even the Mohawks. If they wanted to avail themselves of his services, as they sometimes did, that was fine, but if Jimmy Jewel started questioning their right to move product he and Earle would end up tied to chairs in the [bar] with pieces of themselves scattered by their feet, assuming their feet weren't among the scattered pieces, while the bar burned down around their ears, assuming they still had ears. from page 86 The Whisperers is John Connolly's newest Charlie Parker installment in which some beloved characters reappear and in which previous characters from another Parker installment reappear to shed further light on the big baddie that may or may not be coming for Parker in the future. This newest inst

A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

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