I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for odd place names. Our personal favourite, in the Jane and Rob household, is the magnificently odd (but slightly naughty) Broadwoodwidger in Devon. Closer to home we enjoy going through Thurgoland and a trip back home to Essex isn’t complete without giggling at Vange. Essentially we are very peurile. I particularly like the kind of odd town names you get in the U.S.A. – small town America does the best place names with classics like Yeehaw Junction, Paint Lick, Bitter End or Hop Bottom. They lend themselves to book titles too – Laura Ingalls Wilder and L.M. Montgomery knew this – so I was interested in what kind of place Broken River would be…
It turns out Broken River is a fairly broken sort of small town. It has a closed down cinema and a few stores: the only part that is really thriving is the local prison. Its main claim to fame is the brutal murder, many years previously of a couple living in an isolated house on the edge of town. The story follows the family who move into the house – a writer, her unfaithful sculptor husband and their precocious 12 year-old daughter – the men responsible for the original shooting and, slightly oddly, an entity referred to as the Observer. This means the book is a blend of thriller, a contemporary family saga and something a bit stranger but it does it very well. The Observer character could have been a distraction but it actually tied together the various groups of characters pretty well as well as allowing us to shift our focus between groups.
This is an interesting book and it is certainly a change from the run of psychological thrillers. In fact, since many of the characters follow the same website which delves into unsolved crimes, it is possibly more interested in the psychology of those who are fascinated by murder.
Jane
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