In “Broken Harbor,” she portrays the anguish that Ireland’s economic collapse has brought to her generation. She studied acting at Trinity College and acted in the theater before turning to fiction. The American-born author is 39 and has lived in Dublin since 1990.

I think French is here suggesting the problems that arise when detectives follow their gut instincts and thereby too often condemn innocent people to prison. Still, they soon clash over the identity of the killer. At first, Mick Kennedy, a man with a healthy ego (“I am bloody good at my job”), patronizes his new partner for his lower-class ways, but Richie wins his respect. It’s an ingenious plot, but there’s much more to the story. We don’t know for a long time whether this creature actually existed, if Patrick’s obsession with it was a sign of mental breakdown, or if someone was causing the noises to drive him mad. It emerges that sensible, well-liked Patrick had become convinced that he heard a small animal entering his attic and menacing his family. The holes and the trap are a secondary puzzle. Lacking evidence of forced entry or robbery, they see at least three possibilities: Either the wife or the husband could have attacked the others, or some third party might have entered their home with murderous intent. The wife survives but cannot speak for several days as the detectives struggle to discover who attacked the family and why. Numerous holes in the walls of the house and an animal trap in the attic complicate the mystery. The children were smothered in their beds the husband and wife were found in the kitchen with multiple stab wounds. Patrick Spain and his two small children are dead, and his wife, Jenny, is in critical condition. Tana French’s new novel begins as a police procedural and evolves into a psychological thriller of exceptional complexity and depth.Īt the outset, two Dublin detectives, the veteran Mick Kennedy and his rookie partner, Richie Curran, are summoned to a horrific crime scene in a failed housing development near Broken Harbor, outside Dublin.

Broken harbor