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

In The Woods by Tana French

"What I warn you to remember is that I am a detective. Our relationship with the truth is fundamental, but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies ... and every variation on deception. The truth is the most desirable woman in the world and we are the most jealous lovers, reflexively denying anyone else the slightest glimpse of her. We betray her routinely ... This is my job ... What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this--two things: I crave truth. And I lie." opening lines of In The Woods chapter 1, pages 3-4 In The Woods by Tana French, an Irish writer, is an extremely well-written and well-crafted mystery novel. The downside is that this is French's debut novel, and her website (located at http://www.tanafrench.com/ ) does not off...

Broken by Karin Slaughter

Before I begin the formal review there are a few things I need to get off my chest in the wake of finishing this book; I'll do so without giving away too many (or any) spoilers. The OUTRAGE!: the identity of Detective Lena Adams' new beau; the low depths to which Grant County's interim chief has sunk and brought the police force down with him; agent Will Trent's wife, Angie's, sixth sense/nasty habit of reappearing in his life just when he's slipping away from her. Thank God for small miracles though because while Angie was certainly referred to during the book, the broad didn't make an appearance. One sign that I've become way too invested in these characters is that I'd like to employ John Connolly's odd pair of assassins, Louis and Angel, to contract out a hit on Angie; do you think Karin Slaughter and John Connolly could work out a special cross over? Hallelujah: Dr. Sara Linton and agent Will Trent are both back. There is no hallelujah fo...

Generation Kill by Evan Wright and One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick

Non-fiction books aren't really my thing; generally, this is how my relationship goes with non-fiction books: I see a really interesting one, I borrow it, I start to read it, and then I ditch it a chapter or two later when the dry, boring writing and non-existent plot fail to hook me. However, this a review of two non-fiction books that I read back to back after a five year old three article series that I dug up on the internet; it was written by Evan Wright and preceded his book Generation Kill , which is basically a book version of the article series that he wrote and published in Rolling Stone Magazine . Recently HBO adapted Generation Kill into a mini-series that ran sometime last year; I got the series on DVD and in the midst of watching it, I decided I wanted to get my hands on the book to read. In the meantime, I stumbled across One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick, the lieutenant of the platoon that Wright embedded with, and I read that book while I waited for Generation K...

A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

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