All Of Us Are Broken by Fiona Cummins #AllOfUsAreBroken @FionaAnnCummins @panmacmillan @laurasherlock21 #BookReview

 

Every one of them has a dark secret

The Family

After a year they want to forget, the Hardwicke family set out to the Scottish Highlands for a much needed holiday.

The Crimes

They are about to cross paths with Missy and Fox, a violent and dangerous young couple hell-bent on infamy, their love story etched in blood and a dark past which must be uncovered.

The Detective

As the clock ticks down, Detective Saul Anguish is on the hunt to find the couple before more lives are lost.

The Mother – who will be forced to make an impossible decision.

All Of Us Are Broken by Fiona Cummins is published by Pan Macmillan on 20 July 2023. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review. 

I will never forget reading a pre-publication copy of Fiona Cummins' first book Rattle, back in 2016. I was completely blown away by her incredible writing and the astonishing plot. Since then, I've read everything that she's written and she never disappoints.

Once again, with All Of Us Are Broken she's produced a high quality crime thriller written with such flair and style. Her prose is beautiful, despite the dark and often violent content. Her descriptive prose is a delight and her characterisation is immaculate. 

This author excels in putting forward various points of view, and this story is seen through the different eyes and viewpoints of the main characters. There's the Hardwicke family. Mother Christine and her two children. This family have endured suffering recently and their break in Scotland is designed to help them to heal ..... if only they knew! 

Detective Saul Anguish is a character familiar to regular readers of this author. He's appeared in recent books and he remains a total mystery to the reader. A police officer with a very dark side. He has a sense of justice, but he's not averse to bending the rules at times. He has some extraordinary habits and the only person that he really trusts is Dr Clover March, a forensic linguist, and goes by the nickname of Blue. 

Then we have Melissa Smith and Dashiell Lloyd, two desperately broken people who want to be famous. However, their only talent is in creating mayhem and murder. A Bonnie and Clyde type couple who callously embark on a journey that will involve multiple deaths and involve a heart stopping chase to the end. 

Cummins begins the story with a prologue that is enticing and intriguing and then goes on to introduce each character to the reader. She doesn't hold back and her characters, and the readers are faced with some very dark, very disturbing issues, but so carefully done. There's no exploitation of the reader, nothing is gratuitous, every single beautifully written sentence adds a depth to this polished and gripping story. 

There is no doubt that Fiona Cummins is one of our finest crime fiction authors at the moment. Highly recommended. 

Fiona Cummins is an award-winning former journalist and a graduate of the Faber Academy, where she now teaches her own Writing Crime course. She is the bestselling author of five crime thriller novels, all of which have received widespread critical acclaim from household names including Val McDermid, Lee Child, David Baldacci, Martina Cole and Ian Rankin. Three of her novels have been optioned for television.

Rattle, her debut, has been translated into several languages and Marcel Berlins wrote in The Times: 'Amid the outpouring of crime novels, Rattle is up there with the best of them.' Fiona was selected for McDermid's prestigious New Blood panel at the 2017 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, where her novel was nominated for a Dead Good Reader Award for Most Exceptional Debut. A sequel, The Collector, was published in February 2018 and David Baldacci described it as 'A crime novel of the very first order'.

Her third novel - standalone thriller The Neighbour - was published in April 2019. Ian Rankin called it 'creepy as hell'. Her fourth novel When I Was Ten, an Irish Times bestseller, was published in April 2021. Into The Dark, Fiona's fifth novel, was published in April 2022 and was described by Sarah Vaughan, author of Netflix smash-hit Anatomy of A Scandal, as 'Complex. Inventive. Twisty. Unsettling.' The Daily Mail said it was 'breathtakingly good'. It is currently longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Her sixth novel, All Of Us Are Broken, the second in her series featuring troubled detective Saul Anguish, will be published in July 2023.

When Fiona is not writing, she can be found on Twitter, eating biscuits or walking her dogs. She lives in Essex with her family.

Twitter @FionaAnnCummins