Broken Harbor

A Novel

By: Tana French

Narrated by: Stephen Hogan

From Tana French, author of the forthcoming novel The Searcher, a New York Times best-selling 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 “Scorcherˮ Kennedy is the star of the Dublin Murder Squad. He plays by the books and plays hard, and thatʼs 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 itʼs going to be an easy solve, but too many small things can't be explained: the half dozen baby monitors pointed at holes smashed in the Spains' walls, the files erased from the familyʼs computer, the story Jenny told her sister about a shadowy intruder slipping past the house's 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.

©2012 Tana French (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“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)]

“Broken Harbour is a novel, of course, but it's also a headline...it's 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)

“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... she has irresistibly sly ways of toying with readers’ expectations.” (Janet Maslin, The New York Times)