Book #30: Broken Harbor by Tana French

I started reading this book last night and I kept reading straight through until 3 am this morning. Not the brightest decision I've ever made, since we had to get up and clean the church this morning and I agreed to make cream puffs for a baby shower and we have a baby who doesn't sleep in, but I just really wanted to finish the book. It's a murder mystery set in Ireland, and the narrator is Mick Kennedy, a detective in Dublin. Kennedy has always followed the rules and has a great solve record on the Murder Squad, but when he gets put on a case set in Brianstown, erstwhile Broken Harbor, he gets challenged by a lot of his personal past while trying to solve the murder of a family of four.

I really liked this book. I liked Kennedy--he clearly had a lot of issues in his past (mother's suicide, crazy sister, etc.) but he says in the beginning that he worked through them and it shows. Although he clearly has a temper, he (almost) always keeps it and stays in control, even when presented with the most ridiculous situations (although he gets tested more and more throughout this case). He is clearly a pretty tough-guy cop who is very focused on doing the job right more than anything else, but he takes a lot of time taking care of his sister at the same time. I also Kennedy's partner and the interplay between the two of them--it was interesting reading about the interactions between police partners and how Kennedy's training them. And the mystery itself was pretty intriguing--I was actually pretty surprised by the ending (which is as mysteries should be, right?).

One thing that I didn't love about the book was that I thought that some of the conversations/discussion scenes in the book seemed to go a little long for my attention span, if that makes sense. Kennedy's interrogations of suspects or chats with his crazy sister could go on for pages and pages and PAGES, it felt like. The confession of the actual killer at the end seemed to go on forever, and it was mostly rehashing stuff that you already knew, just from the killer's own perspective. (But that might have been because it was almost 3 in the morning when I was reading it too.) All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book--it was a great mystery and it was pretty well-written. Not much more I could ask for.