The nude body of a 31-year-old woman washes up in a secluded cove on the Dorset coast; at the same time, her 3-year-old daughter is found wandering alone in the streets of a nearby town. The woman, Kate Sumner, was raped and choked before being thrown into the water, and traces of Rohypnol, the so-called date-rape drug, are found in her bloodstream. There are just three suspects in the crime: Kate's husband, William Sumner, a tortured and sexually frustrated man; a handsome, charming but also very disturbed young actor named Steven Harding; and Tony Bridges, a teacher whose friendship with Harding is complicated by jealousy and anger.

Out of these basic ingredients, Minette Walters--the reigning alchemist of the British psychological thriller--has spun another complicated story of passion and repression. In the introduction to the reviewer's edition, Walters says: "Each character is portrayed in depth, and the solution lies in understanding what goes on inside their heads." This is true, up to a point. But what Walters doesn't mention is the sly, slow, and occasionally devious way she doles out the information needed to reach that understanding. You have to weigh the evidence of tidal charts and forensic tests. You must also decide whether the little lies of the characters add up to a big guilt. It's a plausible ending, but you may feel a bit manipulated. Other examples of Walters's alchemy: The Dark Room, The Echo, The Ice House, The Scold's Bridle. --Dick Adler


From Publishers Weekly
Walters's novels (The Echo, 1997, etc.) depict complex, fallible people caught in intricate plots whose course and solution defy guesswork. Here, a woman's body washes up on the Dorset coast; then a toddler is found wandering alone in the nearby town of Poole. Initially, the investigation identifies two suspects, later a third, with both the police and the reader unable to establish definite means and opportunity, although all three suspects have motives. The dead woman, Kate SumnerAwho had been raped and strangled, her fingers broken before she drownedAwas chameleonlike: a greedy, malicious social climber, but an attentive wife and loving mother. Her husband may be a browbeaten yet adoring spouse, but his child fears him and his alibi is questionable. One suspect, Steven Harding, is a self-absorbed, sex-obsessed actor and a compulsive liar, but there's little evidence of his rumored affair with Kate. His friend Tony Bridges is a respected high school chemistry teacher with a heavy dope habit and a yen for his female students. The local constable, Nick Ingram, whose lack of ambition hides a probing mind and sharp insights into the human psyche, is immersed in the perplexing case. His investigation reacquaints him with stableyard owner Maggie Jenner, whose marriage to a confidence man shattered her family and its fortune, for which she unreasonably holds Nick responsible; Maggie and Nick's slow, witty courtship is one of the great pleasures of the novel. Each time the police develop a strong case against one suspect, the evidence shifts, pointing to another. Finally, a clever analysis of events and of human motivation leads them to the guilty party. This is psychological suspense at its best, engendered in a novel whose sinuous plot and enigmatic characters will captivate readers as surely as newfound love. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
In her sixth novel, Walters (The Echo, LJ 3/1/97) grabs us from the opening sceneAthe corpse of an attractive and pregnant woman is discovered washed ashore on the rocky Dorset coast in England. She has been drugged and sexually assaulted, her fingers deliberately broken, her body lashed to a dinghy to ensure her slow and painful death. What resident of the seaside village could be capable of such an atrocious crime? It's telling about the current state of English seaside villages that there are three prime suspects handy. Steven Harding, an actor whose most recent roles have been pornographic and who likes to sail, discovers the body. His friend Tony Bridges may have been jealous enough of Steven to try to shift blame for the murder onto him. And there is the victim's husband, who may have been pushed just far enough to murder his errant wife. Walters joins Ruth Rendell and P.D. James as the best current British purveyors of dark tales of psychological suspense. Her latest will be flying off bookstore and library shelves. For all public libraries. [BOMC selection; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/99.]ABob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., M.-ABob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


New York Times Book Review, 6/27/99
"Ambiguity is an art, and Minette Walters has mastered it in THE BREAKER, a tantalizing English whodunit that hinges on the aberrant nature of a crime and the deviant psychology of the people most likely to have committed it...all the characters have been bared to the bone and the suspense is killing - but only because the psychology is sound."


From AudioFile
Walters plumbs the human psyche in gritty fashion, working language with a skill that few can equal. Her work is showcased remarkably in audio format, especially when the vocal instrument is Simon Prebble's. From the book's introductory scene of a woman's rape, mutilation and death to a later eerie imitation of the same brutality-Prebble gets it right. Leading us through tortuous routes of investigation with characterizations that are incomparable, he reveals each voice in the heat of the moment, along with all its underlying emotional subtext. There are many compelling (and repelling) characters here, and we become fully acquainted with them. S.B.S. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Kirkus Reviews
When the binoculars that young Paul and Daniel Spender have snitched from their father first give them a glimpse of the body of Kate Hill-Sumner in Chapman's Pool, off the Isle of Purbeck, three other people are also close by: a self-styled actor whose specialty is gay pornography; a horse-boarder whose swindler husband has run off with all her money; and a teenaged girl aboard an offshore boat idly looking for something to videotape. All three will soon be caught up in the Dorset constabulary's relentless probe of the dead woman's secrets. But the most shocking presence is an absence: Kate's toddler Hannah, who's found wandering the streets of Poole. Why would an assailant brutally rape and disfigure Kate and set her daughter free several miles away? In fact, since Hannah screams at any man's approach, who could have attacked Kate while her daughter was near? And how many lies are the shocked widower, pharmaceutical chemist William Sumner, and Steven Harding, the actor who insists that Kate was stalking him, going to tell? In a brilliantly merciless series of interrogations, Purbeck Constable Nick Ingram and Dorset Inspector John Galbraith strip away layer after layer from the artfully constructed lives and personalities their suspects have made for themselves, bringing a ferocious intensity to the question of who killed Kate. Once again, Walters (The Echo, 1997, etc.) breathes new life into the classic whodunit by treating the cast as agonizedand this time monstrously immaturehuman beings. (Book-of-the-Month main selection) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Here's a snippet from an interview Mystery editor Andrew LeCount conducted with the award-winning Minette Walters. To read the complete interview, click the "Interviews & Essays" link on the left sidebar of this page.

B&N.com: Seems to me that one challenging aspect of writing in the English style is that, since you introduce fewer characters into the fray, it's so much more difficult to keep the killer's identity a secret.

MW: I do think it's a very sophisticated voice, the English voice, actually. And the other thing we can't do, of course, Raymond Chandler said very famously -- when you run out of ideas you bring a man into the room with a gun in his hand [laughs]. I mean, it's so flippant a remark since he's such a great writer, but we can't do that. It's quite difficult to suddenly bring in somebody, to inject that type of action. It lacks verisimilitude since there are very few guns in our society. We've just got rid of all the handguns after a law was passed. Now there are no handguns; I would love America to try the same thing.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Twelve hours after a woman's body is washed up on a deserted shore on the south coast of England, her traumatized three-year-old daughter is discovered twenty miles away, alone and apparently abandoned.... The obvious suspect is a young actor, a handsome loner obsessed with pornography, who lies about his relationship with the murdered woman. But as the investigation progresses, police attention shifts to the woman'shusband. Was he in fact on a business trip to Liverpool the night she died? Was she indeed the "respectable woman" he claims her to have been? Did he love her or hate her? And more disturbing, why does his little daughter scream in horror every time he tries to pick her up?

SYNOPSIS

Crime fiction just doesn't get any better than that of the Edgar Award-winning Minette Walters. Her chilling latest, , delivers a sharp, intense, twisting-and-turning plot that'll have you sleeping with the lights bright -- guaranteed. A woman is found murdered and raped facedown on the beach, and only her mute daughter knows who the killer is. Some say you always hurt the one you love. Is that the case in this spine-tingler?

FROM THE CRITICS

Los Angeles Times

Minette Walters knows the cruel kinkiness that can lurk behind the most sedate of facades.

People Magazine

Tantalizing...erotically charged. Walters stakes her claim as a worthy rival to P.D.James and Ruth Rendell.

Marilyn Stasio

...[A] tantalizing English whodunit that hinges on the aberrant nature of a crime and the deviant psychology of the people most likely to have committed it....As clues are dropped and lies are uncoveredsuspicion keeps shifting from one man to the other; but clues can be misleadingand everyone lies about sex. —The New York Times Book Review

San Diego Union

A virtuoso of psychological suspense.

Jeri Wright - Mystery Reader.com