Broken Harbour

Broken Harbour (2012), a literary thriller by Tana French, is the fourth installment in her Dublin Murder Squad series. The novel won numerous awards, including the Irish Crime Fiction Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. French has been praised for her blend of literary characterization, setting, and use of language alongside propulsive plots. Broken Harbour is told from the first-person point of view of Detective Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy. The plot involves an investigation into the murder of a man and two children (and the seeming attempted murder of a woman) in Broken Harbour, a formerly rural location on the outskirts of Dublin, Ireland, that saw attempted development and then decline in the boom and recession of the early 2000s. The novel explores themes including Appearance Defining Reality, Animalistic Human Nature, and Agency Versus Randomness in Murder.

This guide refers to the 2012 Hachette UK print edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of mental illness, child death, death by suicide, death, and sexual content.

Plot Summary

Murder Detective Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy remembers being assigned an investigation that should have been a “dream case.” He and his young trainee, Richie Curran, drive to a place called Brianstown to visit the home of the Spains, a family that has been victim to a terrible crime: The father, Pat, and two young children, Emma and Jack, have been murdered, and the mother, Jennifer, is in critical condition. The housing estate is unfinished, one of many housing projects begun during the Celtic Tiger economic boom but left nearly abandoned in the wake of the recession. Scorcher knows Broken Harbour, as the place used to be known, because his family took annual vacations to a caravan park there when he was younger. While it is not revealed until much later in the novel, Broken Harbour is where Scorcher’s mother died by suicide, walking into the water and nearly taking his younger sister, Dina, with her.

When Scorcher and Richie inspect the house, they observe that while the parents have been stabbed, the children were suffocated. There is no sign of breaking and entering, which suggests that the killer may have been a resident of the house. They also notice numerous odd holes in the walls and baby monitors pointing at potential entrances. They speak with Jenny’s sister, Fiona, who reveals that Jenny had been concerned about several apparent break-ins a few months earlier, during which nothing significant was taken but items appeared to have been moved.

Scorcher likes to believe that people reap what they sow. He tells Richie the best explanation for a case is usually the simplest, and victims tend to invite murder into their lives. He is therefore surprised when they find a “lair,” or hide, in one of the abandoned houses nearby. Equipped with a sleeping bag and binoculars, it is the perfect vantage point from which to watch the Spains, suggesting that the murderer was an outsider. The physical evidence seems to eliminate Jenny as a suspect because some of her wounds could not be self-inflicted.

Scorcher’s sister, Dina, is waiting for him at headquarters. She has a mental illness and is very upset; Scorcher takes her back to his apartment. She calms down and, the next morning, he leaves her in his apartment and goes to meet Richie at the postmortem exams. They conduct a stakeout in the hide and intercept Conor Brennan, who becomes their main suspect. Later, they realize that Conor is Emma’s godfather and a former close friend of the Spains before they disagreed with Conor’s derisive skepticism of their home purchase.

Richie and Scorcher interview Conor, who confesses to the murders. However, Richie is skeptical, feeling that something doesn’t add up. He believes that something was going on in the house before the murders, evidenced by the holes in the walls. He asks if they can continue conducting a parallel investigation into Pat Spain, and Scorcher agrees.

The computer tech finds Pat’s participation on online wildlife forums, where he was seeking advice about an animal that had gotten into his home. The posts become increasingly obsessive, and Pat becomes increasingly desperate. Eventually, his posts reveal that it was Pat who made the holes in the walls, and there was never an animal in the house.

When they search Conor’s apartment, Richie finds a woman’s fingernail with a fiber from one of Emma’s pillows on it, proving that Jenny was the murderer. However, Richie hides the evidence and doesn’t tell Scorcher about it.

Dina comes back to Scorcher’s flat the following day, and they argue. She leaves and, uncharacteristically, he doesn’t go after her. The novel later reveals that after she leaves Scorcher’s flat, she goes to Richie’s apartment. Richie and Dina have sex; when she leaves the apartment, she takes the bag with the crucial evidence against Jenny in it.

During an interview, Conor reveals that after his fight with the Spains and when the economic downturn started, he started to spend time in Brianstown, finding the lair and spying on the Spains. He missed his friendship with them and found comfort in observing their family life, but he eventually graduated to entering the house.

Scorcher finds out that Richie hid evidence, which is now inadmissible in court. Richie explains that he hesitated because he thinks if Jenny does not go to jail, she is likely planning to die by suicide. He believes that under the circumstances, it would be more humane to let her do so. Richie acknowledges that Dina has told him about Scorcher’s mother’s cause of death, and he understands why Scorcher might not feel the same way. Scorcher tells the young detective that he will be reverted to uniform after his misstep.

Scorcher goes to interview Jenny Spain. He tells her she hasn’t been cautioned and nothing she says will be admissible in court. She tells him the whole story: Pat’s increasing obsession with an animal in the walls that didn’t exist; her attempts to keep up appearances; and her experience of dizzy spells and missing sections of memory. She says the day of the murders was a bad day. Emma woke up crying in the middle of the night, terrified of Daddy’s animal. Jenny had gone downstairs to confront Pat and found him waiting for the animal in a cabinet, using himself as bait. She decided she needed to get the children out and went upstairs to suffocate them. She then came back downstairs and stabbed Pat, telling him that they needed to hurry and go find the children. When he died, she tried to stab herself but wasn’t strong enough.

From his hide, Conor saw the commotion and came over. He tried to get an ambulance for Jenny but she screamed at him not to and begged for his help in dying so that she can be with her family. He attempted to do so but failed.

Scorcher talks with Jenny’s sister, Fiona, who has also figured out that her sister is the murderer. He convinces her to help him fabricate evidence that will convict Jenny, arguing that she is likely to die by suicide if she is not arrested, and she would be safer in jail. After successfully doing so, Scorcher decides to resign from the murder squad, his professional integrity compromised.