MixedThe A.V. ClubShe’s still writing compelling, well-paced murder mysteries, but the mystery-novel/literary-novel blend that read as unique and formula-busting five years ago now simply reads as French’s personal formula ... Following French’s formula, there’s a murder, the grim economic realities of Ireland, and a detective with an intensely personal connection to the case. In Broken Harbor, however, those elements don’t intertwine as organically as in her previous books ... To begin with, French challenged herself with Kennedy, the least likeable of her narrators so far. French is more successful when writing detectives outside the establishment—too young, too independent, too female. Kennedy, by contrast, is the establishment, rigid and unpleasant on purpose. French wanted to examine the kind of man who would turn into a pontificating asshole, and the cost is a book full of pontification and assholery. She gives him an unbalanced younger sister to provide instant humanity, but that character just ups the annoyance factor ... But these drawbacks are only significant by comparison with French’s earlier work. As ever, the mystery is solid. French has a particular gift, which she passes on to her detectives, of piecing together the victims’ world—not just the scene of the crime, but their lives, relationships, habits, and secrets. French’s detectives expand the net to include the victims’ entire life before they tighten it around whatever lit the spark for murder ... While it’s a first-rate mystery, it’s still merely an exemplar of a genre French already transcended.
Paul Murray
RaveBookslutIt’s impossible not to love these boys who think they’ve transported an action figure through time and space. They cling so endearingly to the belief that they’re on the verge of outsmarting the universe, probably because the universe, in all other aspects of their life, seems to have it in for them … The dorm and classroom scenes where the boys jostle and banter and play video games and light farts on fire show them at their most boyish, but within these scenes you see their loyalty and perspicacity towards each other, and their righteous outrage at being wronged. You see them already becoming adults. Unfortunately, the adults of Murray’s world don’t do much credit to the stature.
