Amazon.co.uk Review
When Kate Sumner's corpse is discovered naked, bruised, prone and violated on the rocks of a sleepy South Coast town by two curious young boys and her tiny, traumatised daughter is found wandering alone several miles away, police are instinctively drawn to two suspects. William Sumner, Kate's husband, and Steven Harding, a handsome would-be actor, find themselves at the centre of the investigation and as police suspicions grow, their fatally flawed personalities are gradually disembowelled in the search for the truth. The clever presentation of part of the evidence in the form of bland witness statements, stylishly contrasting with the fast-paced narrative that swoops between the two prime suspects, is an ingenious tool which allows the weaknesses of each man to be gradually revealed.
The Breaker is an example of the crime novel at its very best, with characters and situations so carefully judged that they become all the more believable as the story is pushed towards its chilling climax. Minette Walters has more than proved her exceptional talent for mystery and suspense in the award-winning The Ice House, The Sculptress and The Scold's Bridle and here merely confirms her unquestionable standing as the true Queen of intelligent crime writing. --Susan Harrison
Product Description
When she revisited, always with astonishment, what had happened to her, it was the deliberate breaking of her fingers that remained indelibly printed on her memory . . . Twelve hours after a woman’s broken body is washed up on a deserted shore, her traumatized three-year-old daughter is discovered twenty miles away wandering the streets of Poole. But why was Kate killed and her daughter, a witness, allowed to live? And why weren’t they together? More curiously, why had Kate willingly boarded a boat when she had a terror of drowning at sea? Police suspicion centres on both a young actor, whose sailing boat is moored just yards from where the toddler is found, and the murdered woman’s husband. Was he really in Liverpool the night she died? And why does their daughter scream in terror every time he tries to pick her up?
