Broken Harbor
Praise for Broken Harbor and Tana French
“Broken Harbor proves anew that [Tana French] is one of the most talented crime writers alive.”
—The Washington Post
“Ms. French creates haunting, damaged characters who have been hit hard by some cataclysm. . . . This may sound like a routine police procedural. But like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, this summer’s other dagger-sharp display of mind games, Broken Harbor, is something more.”
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“So much of the pleasure inherent in reading these novels is in trying to figure out where things are going and being constantly surprised, not to mention thoroughly spooked. I predict Broken Harbor will be on more than one Best of 2012 list—it’s definitely at the top of mine.”
—Associated Press
“In most crime novels, good cops and decent people court tragedy by disobeying the rules of society. But the stories French tells reflect our own savage times: the real trouble starts when you play fair and do exactly as you’re told.”
—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
“French’s psychologically rich novels are so much more satisfying than your standard issue police procedural. Each of her novels focuses on one detective in the Murder Squad. You certainly don’t have to read the books in order, but if you do, the bonus is that you come to know characters inside and out, and, consequently, realize just how wobbly our knowledge of anybody’s ‘true’ nature is. . . . French brilliantly evokes the isolation of a Gothic landscape out of the Brontës and transposes it to a luxury suburban development gone bust. The cause, of course, is Ireland’s economic free fall—the Celtic Tiger turned needy cub—and, like all superior detective fiction, French’s novels are as much social criticism as they are whodunit.”
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air
“In Tana French’s Broken Harbor, the mundane sets the stage for mayhem. . . . [French] gets points for her style and originality. . . . A pleasingly complicated new thriller.”
—The Washington Post
“French has that procedural pro’s knack for making mundane police work seem fascinating. And she’s drawn not just to the who but also to the why—those bigger mysteries about the human weaknesses that drive somebody to such inhuman brutality. What really gives Broken Harbor its nerve-rattling force is [French’s] exploration of events leading up to the murders, rendered just as vividly as the detectives’ scramble to solve them.”
—Entertainment Weekly (A– rating)
“These four novels have instated Ms. French as one of crime fiction’s reigning grand dames—a Celtic tigress. . . . It’s not the fashion in literary fiction these days to address such things as the psychological devastation that a fallout of the middle class can wreak on those who have never known anything else, and Ms. French does it with aplomb—and a headless sparrow and dozens of infrared baby monitors.”
—The Washington Times
“The fourth book in Tana French’s brilliant, genre-busting series about the (fictitious) Dublin Murder Squad. . . . Invoking atmosphere is one of French’s particular gifts, and in this department, Broken Harbor (the name of the town before the developers got hold of it) is a tour de force.”
—Laura Miller, Salon.com
“Ms. French has come to be regarded as one of the most distinct and exciting new voices in crime writing. She constructs her plots in a dreamlike, meandering fashion that seems at odds with genre’s fixed narrative conventions. Sometimes, it’s not even clear whodunit. Her novels have been translated into 31 languages, with 1.5 million copies in print. . . . Broken Harbor has the hallmarks of a standard police procedural: a cocky homicide detective with a troubled past who educates his younger partner with pat lessons; a shocking crime that seems to defy explanation; a heart-stopping twist at the end. But Ms. French undercuts expectations at every turn. The victims begin to look less like victims; the case starts to unravel; and the lead detective makes compromises that could ruin him.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Both the characters and the crime command attention, page by page.”
—New York Daily News
“French’s flair for setting and its influence on characters, as well as her elegant prose, shine in Broken Harbor. The emptiness of Brianstown becomes the modern equivalent of the spooky mansion, complete with things that go bump in the night. . . . French expertly shows the importance of connecting with each other, and how fragile those bonds can be.”
—Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale)
“Salon.com’s Laura Miller has this advice for anyone who has not yet read every Tana French novel, ‘Just go out and get them right now.’”
—NPR’s Weekend Edition
“French’s eloquently slow-burning fourth Dublin Murder Squad novel shows her at the top of her game. . . . As usual, French excels at drawing out complex character dynamics.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Each of French’s novels offers wonderfully complex and fully realized characters. . . . French has never been less than very good, but Broken Harbor is a spellbinder.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“A mystery that is perfectly in tune with the times . . . [French] continues to distinguish herself with this fourth novel, marked by psychological acuteness and thematic depth. . . . There are complications, deliberations, and a riveting resolution.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“French’s deft psychological thriller, focusing on parallel stories of mentally ill mothers and the tragedy of depression, offers a nuanced take on family relationships that will satisfy her fans and readers of psychological thrillers and police procedurals.”
—Library Journal
“Part police procedural, part psychological thriller, all fun.”
—People
“Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Barry—no, those are not the characters in this crime thriller. They are the awards that French won for her debut novel, In the Woods. . . . French has a knack for revealing the victimhood of even the perpetrators and the authorities.”
—The Daily Beast / Newsweek
“Tana French describes Broken Harbor, her latest thriller set in Dublin, as a ‘chain-linked’ book, because a secondary character from an earlier novel becomes ‘the narrator of the next.’ This is the world according to Mick ‘Scorcher’ Kennedy. He has his murder squad’s highest solve rate, earning him the lead in a triple family murder near the seaside at Broken Harbor. Scorcher’s narration is commanding and compelling, cynical and honest, and it’ll keep you riveted to this book. Murder is ‘a unique crime,’ says Scorcher, ‘the only one that makes us ask why.’ . . . The novel is a complex psychological procedural, following Scorcher and his rookie partner, Richie, through their investigation, each step punctuated with Scorcher’s teachable moments like ‘Nothing can trip you up like compassion.’”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“The Irish suspense writer who thrilled all with In the Woods sends Detective Mick Kennedy to a failed luxury housing development outside Dublin where a father and two children have been murdered. The mother is in intensive care. Kennedy has his own history in the neighborhood, one that haunts him.”
—New York Daily News
“French is known for creating detectives that are as complex as the mysteries they solve.”
—The Millions.com
“Every bit as piercingly brilliant as its predecessors . . . Readers can brace themselves for the gritty details of a typical police procedural and then sit back and savor the poetry.”
—Chicago Tribune
“French’s plotting is gripping and original, but perhaps most impressive is her facility with the psychological implications of murder. There is evil at work in this book, but it’s an evil that can be found within human nature rather than contrived to give the hero something to grapple with. Also on display is a bleak landscape of an Ireland hit particularly hard by the recession.”
—The Daily Beast
PENGUIN BOOKS
BROKEN HARBOR
Tana French grew up in Ireland, Italy, the United States and Malawi. She is the author of Faithful Place, The Likeness, and In the Woods, which won Edgar, Macavity, Anthony, and Barry Awards for best first novel. She lives in Dublin with her husband and daughter.
PENGUIN BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2012
Published in Penguin Books 2013
Copyright © 2012 by Tana French
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
ISBN 9780143123309 (paperback)
ISBN 9781101583753 (ebook)
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
French, Tana.
Broken Harbor / Tana French.
p. cm.—(Dublin murder squad series)
ISBN 9780670023653 (hardcover)
1. Police—Ireland—Dublin—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. Dublin (Ireland)—Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction.
I. Title.
PR6106.R457B76 2012
823'.92—dc23 2011042397
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: Darren Haggar
Cover images: (wall) Todd Hido; (sand) Paul Bruins Photography / Getty Images
Version_5
For Darley, magician and gentleman
Contents
Praise for Broken Harbor and Tana French
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Acknowledgments
An Excerpt from The Secret Place
1
Let’s get one thing straight: I was the perfect man for this case. You’d be amazed how many of the lads would have run a mile, given the choice—and I had a choice, at least at the start. A couple of them said it to my face: Sooner you than me, man. It didn’t bother me, not for a second. All I felt was sorry for them.
Some of them aren’t wild about the high-profile gigs, the high-stakes ones—too much media crap, they say, and too much fallout if you don’t get a solve. I don’t do that kind of negativity. If you put your energy into thinking about how much the fall would hurt, you’re already halfway down. I focus on the positive, and there’s plenty of positive there: you can pretend you’re above this stuff, but everyone knows the big cases are the ones that bring the big promotions. Give me the headline-grabbers and you can keep your drug-dealer stabbings. If you can’t take the heat, stay in uniform.
Some of the lads can’t handle kids, which would be fair enough except that, forgive me for asking, if you can’t cope with nasty murders then what the hell are you doing on the Murder Squad? I bet Intellectual Property Rights would love to have your sensitive arse onboard. I’ve handled babies, drownings, rape-murders and a shotgun decapitation that left lumps of brain crusted all over the walls, and I sleep just fine, as long as the job gets done. Someone has to do it. If that’s me, then at least it’s getting done right.
Because let’s get another thing clear, while we’re at it: I am bloody good at my job. I still believe that. I’ve been on the Murder Squad for ten years, and for seven of those, ever since I found my feet, I’ve had the highest solve rate in the place. This year I’m down to second, but the top guy got a run of slam dunks, domestics where the suspect practically slapped the cuffs on his own wrists and served himself up on a plate with applesauce. I pulled the tough ones, the nobody-seen-nothing junkie-on-junkie drudgery, and I still scored. If our superintendent had had one doubt, one single doubt, he could have pulled me off the case any time he wanted. He never did.
Here’s what I’m trying to tell you: this case should have gone like clockwork. It should have ended up in the textbooks as a shining example of how to get everything right. By every rule in the book, this should have been the dream case.
* * *
* * *
The second it hit the floor, I knew from the sound that it was a big one. All of us did. Your basic murder comes straight to the squad room and goes to whoever’s next in the rota, or, if he’s out, to whoever happens to be around; only the big ones, the sensitive ones that need the right pair of hands, go through the Super so he can pick his man. So when Superintendent O’Kelly stuck his head around the door of the squad room, pointed at me, snapped, “Kennedy, my office,” and vanished, we knew.
I flipped my jacket off the back of my chair and pulled it on. My heartbeat had picked up. It had been a long time, too long, since one of these had come my way. “Don’t go anywhere,” I said to Richie, my partner.
“Oooo,” Quigley called from his desk, mock horrified, shaking a pudgy hand. “Is Scorcher in the shit again? I never thought we’d see the day.”
“Feast your eyes, old son.” I made sure my tie was straight. Quigley was being a little bitch because he was next up in the rota. If he hadn’t been a waste of space, O’Kelly might have let the case go to him.
“What’ve you done?”
“Shagged your sister. I brought my own paper bags.”
The lads snickered, which made Quigley purse up his lips like an old woman. “That’s not funny.”
“Too close to the bone?”
Richie was openmouthed and practically hopping off his chair with curiosity. I flipped my comb out of my pocket and gave it a quick run through my hair. “Am I good?”
“Lick-arse,” Quigley said, through his sulk. I ignored him.
“Yeah,” Richie said. “You’re grand. What . . . ?”
“Don’t go anywhere,” I repeated, and went after O’Kelly.
My second hint: he was up behind his desk, with his hands in his trouser pockets, rolling up and down on the balls of his feet. This case had pumped up his adrenaline enough that he wouldn’t fit in his chair. “You took your time.”
“Sorry, sir.”
He stayed where he was, sucking his teeth and rereading the call sheet on his desk. “How’s the Mullen file coming along?”
I had spent the last few weeks putting together a file for the Director of Public Prosecutions on one of those tricky drug dealer messes, making sure the
little bastard didn’t have a single crack to slime through. Some detectives think their job’s done the second the charges are filed, but I take it personally when one of my catches wriggles off the hook, which they seldom do. “Good to go. Give or take.”
“Could someone else finish it up?”
“Not a problem.”
He nodded and kept reading. O’Kelly likes you to ask—it shows you know who’s boss—and since he is in fact my boss, I have no problem rolling over like a good little doggie when it makes things run more smoothly. “Did something come in, sir?”
“Do you know Brianstown?”
“Haven’t heard of it.”
“Neither had I. It’s one of those new places; up the coast, past Balbriggan. Used to be called Broken Bay, something.”
“Broken Harbor,” I said. “Yeah. I know Broken Harbor.”
“It’s Brianstown now. And by tonight the whole country’ll have heard of it.”
I said, “This is a bad one.”
O’Kelly laid one heavy palm on the call sheet, like he was holding it down. He said, “Husband, wife and two kids, stabbed in their own home. The wife’s headed for hospital; it’s touch and go. The rest are dead.”
We left that for a moment, listening to the small tremors it sent through the air. I said, “How did it come in?”
“The wife’s sister. They talk every morning, but today she couldn’t get through. That got her het up enough that she got in her car and headed out to Brianstown. Car’s in the driveway, lights are on in broad daylight, no one’s answering the door, she rings the uniforms. They break the door down and surprise, surprise.”
“Who’s on scene?”
“Just the uniforms. They took one look and figured they were out of their depth, called it straight in.”
“Beautiful,” I said. There are plenty of morons out there who would have spent hours playing detective and churning the whole case to shit, before they admitted defeat and called in the real thing. It looked like we had lucked into a pair with functioning brains.