"All of Us Are Broken" by Fiona Cummins

An audio book.

Prologue – Some people (including Christine Hardwick) are being held at gunpoint in a lodge by a loch by Missy and Fox. Already there are 3 dead bodies. Charlie is her ex-husband though why she reminisces about their honeymoon at this time is a puzzle.

Christine has driven from Essex to Scotland with the 2 children, stopping off at her ex-husband’s parents. Gaylen, her daughter, is thought to be boring by her classmates.

Miss Melissa Smith is a teacher on probation. Gerrard has proposed to her. Melissa likes neither teaching nor Gerrard. There's an accident at school. Melissa walks out and phones her ex - Dasheel Lloyd – an ex-convict. They've not met for 2 years. They drive north, killing and stealing on the way. We get a bio of each victim. They call each other Missy and Fox.

Policeman Talbot couldn’t cope with a dead body that he's found. Suicide? No - no gun at the scene. Saul, a colleague tries to help him. Saul’s sometimes sleeping with Blue (who’d been raped by a policeman Lynch). Blue looks at some handwriting at the scene. The man is Melissa's stepfather, and Melissa's handwritten note is there.

Fox was guilty of manslaughter. Released at 20. His mum was an alcoholic.

Blue has narcolepsy. Saul treats his boss O'Neill as a father figure. He's without family now. When he and Blue returned to his house, dozens of dead chicks had been scattered around his bedroom. She knows something about it but won't say.

O’Neill has told Saul (and only Saul) that Melissa is his daughter. Her stepfather (who she killed) had caused her to have an abortion. She wants notoriety - Bonnie and Clyde.

Gaylen (13) found her father dead. She has juvenile Huntingdon’s, inherited from her father.

Police surround the lodge. Saul decides to go in early, unarmed. He's shot but saves the kids. Fox kills Missie then is shot. “All of us are broken." saays Blue to Saul after, "It’s how we put ourselves together”. At the end, Saul and Blue killed Lynch (by getting a seagull to attack him?)

3 months later, Gaylen’s Huntingdon’s has progressed rapidly. She has months left. The family go to see dolphins near where tragedy happened – her wish, and probably her last trip.

Other reviews

• goodreads
• crimefictionlover (a frustrating read. It boasts myriad strong plot lines and a cast of well drawn characters, against a lavishly rendered landscape but something doesn’t quite gel. Is it the embarrassment of riches in the plotting department? There’s enough here for two, if not three, cracking good books. Or is it the fact that Saul Anguish is so hard to find any empathy with? His tendency to steal little bits of evidence from crime scenes is both annoying and unrealistic, as is Blue’s narcolepsy, which would surely stop her from working.)