Customer Reviews

Broken

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Broken is a novel that I highly recommend for anyone who is riveted by spellbinding suspense and the underbelly of the criminal world in England. This is a second outing for Detective Inspector Kate Burrows and her lover, bad-boy Patrick Kelly. Their first encounter was in "Ladykiller". Great reads!

Broken gives a shocking insight into the life of London's lower class citizens. The story is sad, realistic, believable and an entertaining read. Detective Inspector Kate Burrows is back in her second novel (first was Ladykiller - fantastic read!) and it is a winner! Children are being abducted and left for dead; this leaves DI Kate Burrows in a frantic search to catch the killer and save these defenseless children. The story is all about corruption and violence; could not put this down til I read the whole book.

Where to start? This has to be one of the worst reads I can recall. This book made me angry and frustrated as the storyline dodged all over the place, and characters came and went. What was the significance of the gay truck driver stopped in France with a dead child in the back of the truck? Where did that fit in to the rest of the jigsaw puzzle? The plot has more holes than a seive. It was a jigsaw puzzle with about a third of the pieces missing. The dialogue beats even the banal efforts of Stephen Leather, and that's saying something. Every character seemed to speak with an identical patois of the east end of London (even though the book was set in rural Essex), and thought bubbles accompanied their every utterance. Police investigative methodology was sloppily and inaccurately portrayed, police violence was condoned, and standard procedures ignored. Police integrity was displayed as an oxymoron in this novel. Murders (and there were quite a few), especially those separate to the main investigation into paedophilia and disappearing children, went uninvestigated, with suspects central to the story not even interviewed. What was the moral message of this book? Police integrity lines were often crossed, without consequence, and baddies got to live happily every after. Was there any editorial supervision before this work hit the presses? Evidence is sadly lacking. A complete waste of several days of my life.

Although I bought a book to read and found it quite enjoyable about the seamy side of gangsters in London I find that now I have bought many by her that her books are boring/morbid same ole same ole gangsters beating up their wives cheating on them same ols stuff and repetitive all the time. I dont know how many times she said 'it didn't occur to him' I counted 10 times alone.