I'm now fully in the thrall of Tanya French's latest, 'Broken Harbor.' For those of you who haven't read her, the first book, In the Woods, was about the murder of a child that had bizarre, ritualistic qualities. What was eerie about the book was that a series of murders had taken place in the same town decades before, also of children, and one of the people involved in the current investigation had been a victim who survived the earlier murders, although he remembers almost nothing. It's not just a 'creep you out' serial murderer book, but deals with the mind and emotions of the survivor, who is desperate to find a link to his past in the investigation of the current murder. If that makes any sense.
She's a young Irish writer, and has the procedural elements nailed, as well as the rough dialogue of cops in the trench, the gallows humor and the stress and pressure of a murder investigation. That was her first book. The next several were good, but didn't pack the wallop of the first one, although some of the characters were carried forward.
The new book, about the murder of an entire family in a remote housing development that failed when the economy cratered, shows the author in top form. The level of thoroughness in the investigation, the imagination of the detectives in thinking up leads, and how to pursue them, is far more interesting than the standard police procedural. It's not just forensics or technology ala CSI. These guys have to take virtually no leads, and turn them into a strategy to figure out what happened and who the actor was. It's an amazing ride so far. You have to cope with some peculiarities of Irish slang- but it's easy enough to figure out in context. If you are into police procedurals, grab this one first. Then go back and read In the Woods.
