Broken Harbor: A Novel by Tana French (English) Paperback Book

Description: Broken Harbor by Tana French Starting with her award-winning debut, French has scored four consecutive "New York Times" bestsellers and established herself as one of the top names in the genre. "Broken Harbor" is quintessential FrenchNa damaged hero, an unspeakable crime, and an intricately plotted mysteryNnestled in a timely examination of lives shattered by the global economic downturn. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description From Tana French, author of the forthcoming novel The Hunter, a New York Times bestselling novel that "proves anew that [Tana French] is one of the most talented crime writers alive" (The Washington Post). "Required reading for anyone who appreciates tough, unflinching intelligence and ingenious plotting." —The New York Times Mick "Scorcher Kennedy is the star of the Dublin Murder Squad. He plays by the books and plays hard, and thats how the biggest case of the year ends up in his hands. On one of the half-abandoned "luxury developments that litter Ireland, Patrick Spain and his two young children have been murdered. His wife, Jenny, is in intensive care. At first, Scorcher thinks its going to be an easy solve, but too many small things cant be explained: the half-dozen baby monitors pointed at holes smashed in the Spains walls, the files erased from the familys computer, the story Jenny told her sister about a shadowy intruder slipping past the houses locks. And this neighborhood—once called Broken Harbor—holds memories for Scorcher and his troubled sister, Dina: childhood memories that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control. Author Biography Tana French is also the author of In the Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, The Secret Place, and The Trespasser. Her books have won awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards, the Los Angeles Times Award for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Dublin with her family. Review "Ive been enthusiastically telling everyone who will listen to read Tana French. She is, without a doubt, my favorite new mystery writer. Her novels are poignant, compelling, beautifully written, and wonderfully atmospheric. Just start reading the first page. Youll see what I mean." —Harlan Coben, New York Times bestselling author "Broken Harbor proves anew that [Tana French] is one of the most talented crime writers alive." —The Washington Post "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 genres fixed narrative conventions...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 "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 Flynns Gone Girl, this summers other dagger-sharp display of mind games, Broken Harbor is something more... she has irresistibly sly ways of toying with readers expectations" --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—its definitely at the top of mine." --Associated Press"a tour de force."--Laura Miller, Salon.com "In most crime novels, cood 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 youre told." --Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review "Frenchs psychologically rich novels are so much more satisfying than your standard issue police procedural...French brilliantly evokes the isolation of a Gothic landscape out of the Brontes and transposes it to a luxury suburban development gone bust. The cause, of course, is Irelands economic free fall — the Celtic Tiger turned needy cub — and, like all superior detective fiction, Frenchs novels are as much social criticism as they are whodunit." –Maureen Corrigan, NPRs Fresh Air "French ...[is] 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 her 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 fictions reigning grand dames — a Celtic tigress... Its 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 "Broken Harbour is a novel, of course, but its also a headline...its good to see contemporary literature engaging a crisis that has had such an impact on the lives of so many. This is, in fact, what good literature does. It makes us look at our world and perhaps forces us to see what we have chosen to ignore." --Los Angeles Times Review Quote 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." -- NPRs Weekend Edition "Part police procedural, part psychological thriller, all fun." Discussion Question for Reading Group Guide INTRODUCTION Pat Spain and his wife, Jenny, always believed that, as long as they played by the rules, things would work out all right. It was with this faith that they fell in love, had their two beautiful children, and took out a 110 percent mortgage to buy their first home--a house in a new, lavishly advertised development on the Irish seacoast in an area freshly re-christened "Brianstown" but once known to all as Broken Harbor. But things do not work out all right. As recession chokes the country, the developers fail to finish the neighborhood, property values plummet, and Pat loses his job. Then, on an autumn morning, Jennys sister discovers the couple in a pool of blood. Pat is dead, and Jenny is nearly so. Upstairs in the childrens rooms awaits a still more crushing horror. Enter Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy, ace Murder Squad detective. Kennedy is quick to realize that the Spain case is a "dream case" and that he is just the man for it. If all goes well, the case will cement his position as top man in his department. But, as with the Spains themselves, very little goes well. Scorcher is partnered with Richie Curran, a rookie detective with a lot to learn. At the crime scene, nothing adds up. The Spains were so fastidious that they lined up their shampoo bottles, yet the police discover gaping holes bashed in the interior walls of their house. There are no signs of forced entry, which points to an inside job, but everyone swears that Pat and Jenny were the worlds most loving couple. Then a break comes: a search of a nearby house reveals that a squatter has been keeping the Spains under surveillance. But when the stalker is captured, his story yields only more mysteries. As Jenny fights for life in intensive care, Scorcher hears the clock ticking. He can hold the suspect for only a few days without charging him, and still no answers come. At the same time, an even deeper enigma is playing itself out in Scorchers head. Broken Harbor is, for him, a place laden with nightmarish memories. As he descends further into the tragedy of the Spain family, his investigation drags him ever deeper into his own terrors. And there, making everything worse, is his mentally unstable sister, Dina, who is the last person to let sleeping dogs lie. Brooding in its reflections on the current Irish economy, keenly insightful into hearts and minds of its characters, Broken Harbor is a finely wrought police procedural, but it is ever so much more. Unflinchingly, it narrates the struggle of a good but tortured man to push back a rising tide of wildness and outrage, both in society and in his own battered spirit. Above all else, Scorcher depends on order and control to keep his world from spinning into chaos. But in Broken Harbor madness lurks around every corner. Just beyond the edge of civility and tidy appearances, a beast crouches, cunning, pitiless, and always ready to strike. ABOUT TANA FRENCH Born in Vermont, Tana French had a peripatetic childhood that took her to Ireland, Florence, and Rome, as well as the African nation of Malawi. A resident of Dublin since 1990, she has a degree in Drama and English from Trinity College. Prior to her writing career, she was best known as an actor in a wide variety of theatrical productions in Dublin. Her debut novel, In the Woods , was honored with the Edgar, Barry, Macavity, and Anthony awards. She lives in Dublin with her husband and daughter. Broken Harbor is her fourth book. A CONVERSATION WITH TANA FRENCH Q. Your books resonate beyond their particular plots and the characters; your fiction comments on the distressed conditions that currently exist in Ireland. How does Broken Harbor express concerns about your adopted country? I think if you write mystery, youre going to end up, at some level, focusing on your societys priorities and tensions and deepest fears. Youre writing about murder, the biggest fear of all--and the way that fear expresses itself is obviously going to be shaped by its time and place. Take the flood of serial-killer books in the 80s and 90s: I figure those were a response to the growing sense of isolation and anonymity in cities, where the threat isnt your nearest and dearest any more, the way it is in small-town Agatha Christie; its some faceless, nameless stranger. So, while Broken Harbor was never intended to be an "issue book" or anything like that, I was writing it in Ireland from 2009 through 2011, and that seeped in. Ireland is an epic mess. Thats the mildest way I can put it. And its my generation, the thirty-somethings, who are taking the brunt of it. Not me and my husband personally, or most of our friends--we were broke actors for most of the boom, so we couldnt afford to buy a dog kennel in the middle of nowhere, never mind an actual home. That upset me at the time, but it turned out to have a silver lining in the end. Now a solid proportion of our generation are stuck on half-built, half-occupied, abandoned estates with open sewage pits and no street lighting, miles from any friends or family, and many of their houses are falling to pieces. Theyre unemployed or being taxed to the point where they cant pay their mortgages, and no ones ever going to buy their houses so they can move on. And their belief in a sane world, a world where they have any control over their own lives, has been smashed. That haunts me. It should never have happened; it didnt need to happen. And because Ireland is my home and I love it, I get seriously passionate and seriously angry about terrible things that are done to, and by, this country. That ended up shaping the book. Q. Some of the worst villains in Broken Harbor are invisible and unassailable--not just the animal in the Spains attic, but also the financiers and real estate promoters. What do you think about their culpability in the events of Broken Harbor ? Dont forget the politicians. For reasons made up of a hellish brew of stupidity, cronyism, and corruption, they were right in there with the property developers and the banks, frantically urging my generation to spend ten times our income on unbuilt houses in the middle of nowhere. Our then- Prime Minister said, charmingly, that anyone who didnt believe the property boom could last forever should kill themselves. I dont believe that the people who fell for the hype are innocent victims. They were grown adults, they signed the contracts, no one forced them; there are plenty of people who said no, and they had the choice to do the same. But at the same time. These are people who were trying their absolute best to do everything right. Everything and everyone around them told them that this was the right thing to do, so they did it. And I think it would be ludicrous to say that the people who urged them on are guiltless. Psychological mystery is a natural place to explore that whole area - the ambiguity of guilt. There are other mysteries where culpability is a straightforward thing: X killed Y because X is a bad person, the end. And theyre wonderfully satisfying and necessary books, because its very cathartic to place and contain evil within one person, with the implication that once that persons in jail, evil has been purged and the world of the book is safe again. But psychological mystery is a lot less at home with the idea of evil being neatly bounded and simple to confine. In psychological mystery, evil is often a facet of a lot of the characters, not just the killer, and the most evil actions dont necessarily come from the most evil people - and so, while the justice system punishes the evil action, sometimes the truly evil people do in fact walk away, unassailable. Q. That animal in the attic is one of the strangest touches in your story. Its a little like the beast in Lord of the Flies . How did you hit upon it as a plot device? Thats actually where the whole book began! One night a few years ago, I went into the kitchen, and before I could switch the light on, I half-saw something leap out from behind the toaster, zip across the counter and vanish. I jumped about three feet, but I couldnt find any sign of anything, and my now-husband gave me a dubious look and gently mentioned my overactive imagination. I was a bit miffed, and a bit wary around the kitchen, but it wasnt a big deal. And a couple of nights later my husband was the one who went into the kitchen, and he turned on the light in time to see a mouse doing a runner down behind the cooker. We got some traps and a new toaster, I managed not to say "Told you so," and that was the end of that--except that something stayed in my mind: the frightening sense of dislocation that comes when your inner reality and your outer reality get out of synch; when what you know to be true and what others see arent the same thing. I started thinking about what it would be like if the half-seen something had zipped past someone whose home and marriage were already under threat from outside forces; what it would be like if the mouse didnt show up on Day 3, if this guy went on hearing his home being invaded by an animal that no one else could hear . . . And a couple of years later, that fit together in my mind with what was happening to people around the economic boom and crash--the utter dislocation between the obvious reality and what we were being told, between what people believed and what was happening all around them. Basically, Broken Harbor was written because we had mice. Q. Your ongoing fascination with flawed heroes with tortured pasts reminds us very strongly of Greek tragedy. Does your experience with staged drama influence your writing of fiction? Excerpt from Book Lets get one thing straight: I was the perfect man for this case. Youd 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 didnt bother me, not for a second. All I felt was sorry for them. Some of them arent wild about the high-profile gigs, the high-stakes ones--too much media crap, they say, and too much fallout if you dont get a solve. I dont do that kind of negativity. If you put your energy into thinking about how much the fall would hurt, youre already halfway down. I focus on the positive, and theres plenty of positive there: you can pretend youre 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 cant take the heat, stay in uniform. Some of the lads cant handle kids, which would be fair enough except that, forgive me for asking, if you cant 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. Ive 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 thats me, then at least its getting done right. Because lets get another thing clear, while were at it: I am bloody good at my job. I still believe that. Ive been on the Murder Squad for ten years, and for seven of those, ever since I found my feet, Ive had the highest solve rate in the place. This year Im 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. Heres what Im 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 whoevers next in the rota, or, if hes 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 OKelly 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. "Dont 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 wed 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 hadnt been a waste of space, OKelly might have let the case go to him. "Whatve 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. "Thats 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. "Youre grand. What . . . ?" "Dont go anywhere," I repeated, and went after OKelly. 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 wouldnt 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. "Hows 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 didnt have a single crack to slime through. Some detectives think their jobs 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. OKelly likes you to ask--it shows you know whos 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?" "Havent heard of it." "Neither had I. Its 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." "Its Brianstown now. And by tonight the whole countryll have heard of it." I said, "This is a bad one." OKelly 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 wifes headed for hospital; its 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 wifes sister. They talk every morning, but today she couldnt get through. That got her het up enough that she got in her car and headed out to Brianstown. Cars in the driveway, lights are on in broad daylight, no ones answering the door, she rings the uniforms. They break the door down and surprise, surprise." "Whos 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. "I want you on this. Can you take it?" "Id be honored." "If you cant drop everything else, tell me now and Ill put Flaherty on this one. This takes priority." Flaherty is the guy with the slam dunks and the top solve rate. I said, "That wont be necessary, sir. I can take it." "Good," OKelly said, but he didnt hand over the call sheet. He tilted it to the light, inspecting it and rubbing a thumb along his jawline. "Curran," he said. "Is he able for this?" Young Richie had been on the squad all of two weeks. A lot of the lads dont like training in the new boys, so I do it. If you know your job, you have a responsibility to pass the knowledge on. "He will be," I said. "I can stick him somewhere else for a while, give you someone who knows what hes at." "If Curran cant take the heat, we might as well find out now." I didnt want someone who knew what he was at. The bonus of newbie wrangling is that it saves you a load of hassle: all of us whove been around a while have our own ways of doing things, and too many cooks etcetera. A rookie, if you know how to handle him, slows you down a lot less than another old hand. I couldnt afford to waste time playing after-you-no-after-you, not on this one. "Youd be the lead man, either way." "Trust me, sir. Curran can handle it." "Its a risk." Rookies spend their first year or so on probation. Its not official, but that doesnt make it any less serious. If Richie made a mistake straight out of the gate, in a spotlight this bright, he might as well start clearing out his desk. I said, "Hell do fine. Ill make sure he does." OKelly said, "Not just for Curran. How long since you had a big one?" His eyes were on me, small and sharp. My last high-profile one went wrong. Not my fault--I got played by someone I thought was a friend, dropped in the shit and left there--but still, people remember. I said, "Almost two years." "Thats right. Clear this one, and youre back on track." He left the other half unspoken, something dense and heavy on the desk between us. I said, "Ill clear it." OKelly nodded. "Thats what I thought. Keep me posted." He leaned forward, across the desk, and passed me the call sheet. "Thank you, sir. I wont let you down." "Cooper and the Tech Bureau are on their way." Cooper is the pathologist. "Youll need manpower; Ill have the General Unit send you out a bunch of floaters. Six do you, for now?" "Six sounds good. If I need more, Ill call in." O Details ISBN0143123300 Author Tana French Language English Year 2013 ISBN-10 0143123300 ISBN-13 9780143123309 Format Paperback Publication Date 2013-04-30 Short Title BROKEN HARBOR Media Book DEWEY FIC Subtitle A Novel Series Dublin Murder Squad Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2013-04-30 NZ Release Date 2013-04-30 US Release Date 2013-04-30 UK Release Date 2013-04-30 Publisher Penguin Putnam Inc Imprint Penguin USA Series Number 4 Audience General Pages 464 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:51756116;

Price: 33.3 AUD

Location: Melbourne

End Time: 2025-01-12T03:54:04.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 AUD