A long, sometimes slow-moving, creepy, and extraordinarily well-written novel about a family attacked in their new estate home on the outskirts of Dublin. A father and his two children are dead, their mother found bleeding beside her husband, and nothing adds up. As "Scorcher' Kennedy schools a young detective in the fine art of police work, he keeps a firm line drawn between the investigation taking place in a ghost town of a half-built housing development, left abandoned by its builders when the crash left Ireland overextended and out of luck, and his personal life, including caring for his mentally unstable sister unwelcome memories of family outings at Broken Harbor, then a seaside holiday site, now a grim reminder of a broken economy and all the dreams that broke with it. The half-built estate and the emotional reaction of the family to the sudden halt of the future they had planned so carefully is a powerful depiction of the trauma caused by the economic crash - and of the super-heated materialistic "Celtic Tiger" economy that preceded it, warping a generation's sense of values. The interplay between the investigation and Kennedy's own fierce devotion to his idea of order, a firm, clear, no nonsense way of looking at the world that he's trying to impart to his young charge, that adds a moving twist to what is often a modern Gothic, full of twisted psychological denial. It's Kennedy's occasional vulnerability and tenderness that gives the ending a heartbreaking touch of grace.