Detective Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy arrives at Brianstown, a half-finished "ghost estate" stalled by the Irish financial collapse. Inside a shoreline house, Patrick Spain and his two children are dead, while his wife Jenny clings to life in intensive care. Kennedy and his rookie partner, Richie Curran, trace the family's descent from middle-class stability into isolation and mental disintegration. They find cameras hidden in the walls and holes cut into the attic floor, uncovering Patrick’s obsessive conviction that an animal was stalking the family from within the house’s structure.
Readers interested in the intersection of procedural crime and psychological breakdown find here a study of how economic failure erodes personal identity and sanity. The narrative explains how systemic instability destroys the domestic ideal and challenges the detective's belief in logic and rigid procedure. One finishes the book with a clear understanding of the atmospheric dread produced by the Great Recession and the reality of how a person's surroundings can mirror their internal collapse.
Inward-looking and open-ended; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Empathetic Explorer. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 2012
- Language
- EN
