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. In most crime novels, good cops and decent people court tragedy by disobeying the rules of society. Instead, they focused their fears on a feral animal thought to be moving about in the attic and a silent intruder suspected of slipping into their home. Like other young couples swept up in Ireland’s economic miracle, the Spains couldn’t face the shambles the recession had made of their lives. But he becomes far more interesting once French turns a rather plodding procedural into what it really wants to be - a psychological suspense story about the dangers of suppressing unthinkable thoughts. Mick Kennedy uses this horrific case as a training exercise for his rookie partner, and every so often the veteran cop dispenses some blunt piece of wisdom (“Nothing can trip you up like compassion”) that will come back to haunt them both.įor a long time, bullheaded Mick hardly seems the ideal narrator for this delicately nuanced nightmare of a story. There’s a slim chance that Jennifer Spain might survive her injuries, but her husband has died of multiple stab wounds and their two children have been smothered in their beds. Four members of one family have been brutally attacked in their home in an upscale housing development that collapsed along with the real-estate market. The Dublin murder squad has a grim case to solve in Tana French’s BROKEN HARBOR (Viking, $27.95).
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