So gripping and good that I hardly stopped reading it until I reached the end, going from audio to ebook as needed to keep in the story. As usual, French has crafted a suspenseful mystery with a solid backstory for her detective, and good character development, to give it a little extra dimension and depth. I'll be sad when I'm all caught up on her work, waiting for her new releases.

Dublin Murder Squad 4

I love how Tana French writes language into her books. I feel like I'm in Ireland and I can hear the different accents of her characters. I love a good mystery novel and each one in the Murder Squad series (that I've read so far) has such promise. Tana French takes her time to develop characters and plot. However, usually with about 100 pages to go, I start to get bored and just want to hurry up to know whodunnit. French's slow, detailed writing pace doesn't ever pick up as the story comes to a climax, leaving me feeling a little let down. There's no excitement. No "Ah-ha!" moment. I've read the first four books in this series and had the same experience each time. Not sure I'll continue with this series.

Tana French writes beautifully, and she always delivers a captivating situation, entrancing the reader with well-drawn characters and a sense of place that makes you feel you are there. But there’s always something more than a bit preposterous about the setup, and in this case she has several of her characters, now that we’ve gotten to know them, acting in ways that we just don’t buy.

A really interesting plot-line, but this (like some of her others I've read) could have used some thoughtful editing and a lot less repetitiveness. Also, I did figure out who did what to who well before finding out from the story, but having it explained in vast detail towards the end - pages and pages of detailed dialogue, most of which I finally ended up skimming through - is something I thought was like brow-beating. With good editing the reasons for the crime could have been spaced throughout in snippets of foreshadowing rather than many pages of simply saying 'this is what happened when'. This is why I couldn't give the book more stars.

Although very different from her first Dublin Murder Squad book, this one had as powerful an impact on me. And no one was more surprised than I. I was *not* enthusiastic about a story centering around Scorcher Kennedy, who was a twit of the highest order when we first met him in Faithful Place. And the book starts off with him still being a pompous jerk. But I'm glad I stuck with it.

As with the previous books in this series, the murder mystery drives the action, but the real story is centered around the main character. In each of the books, the main character's foundation is shaken by the case they're working on. And with the exception of Faithful Place, it's mostly been cases where the main character severely cocked up (not through negligence or laziness, but because their of something about their world view).

This is no exception- by the end of the novel I actually felt for Kennedy. It was like a coming-of-age, but in a far more brutal setting: Kennedy's death-grip beliefs on how the world works get eroded away by the case, and by the end of it he still knows himself, but he's pretty wrecked. The thing is, I'd gotten to understand and pity him enough that, rather than feel vindictive about this comeuppance, I was sad for him.

And at the same time, this is a haunted house story that revolves around obsession and the fragility of the human mind. So if you like psychological mysteries and suspense stories, like The Turning of the Screw, as well as character-driven stories, I recommend this one. Even if you haven't read the others, this stands alone just fine.

Bit too long, could have been shorter, in my humble opinion!

The writing was fairly smooth but from start to finish the story line was depressing, desolate and sad. I did not find a positive note in the entire book.

Irish thriller about a detective and his younger partner trying to solve a crime of murder of an entire family by interviewing the lone survivor and a prime suspect.
Unbelievable plot about a large animal and the husband's obsession with it, causing the collapse of marriage, did not sound plausible and the writing was disjointed and frankly sometimes not understandable - could have been lost in the translation.
Oveall , I could have done without reading it.

Broken Harbour was on a list of 10 best page turners in a major paper....NOT !
I found it tedious, too long for what came out of it.