The Breaker

If you have never read a Minette Walters books before, this is an excellent introduction to her writing. If you have read any of her other books, you will not be disappointed with "The Breaker".
From the moment you settle down and read the first chapter, you will find an exploration that you won't want to put down. The mastery of Walters' style is shown here as the story quickly devolves down to only two main suspects, yet the suspense is held to the very end.
Definitely a miss-your-stop commuting read!

i have now read all of minette walter's books that i could get my hands on, and this was definitely my favorite. everytime you think you know who did it, something changes your mind. i also enjoyed how the different characters evolved throughout the novel. this one (like her others) i couldn't put down til i got to the end. i can't wait til she comes out with another book! one of my favorite things about her books is the way she writes statements in different typefaces, so you always differentiate who is narrating. another is that she always has a map at the front, which i tend to refer back to, just to keep a more accurate track of what's going on. i highly recommend this book.

Minette Walters offers us the tale of a young woman whose nude and battered body is found washed ashore from the sea while her young toddler daughter is found wandering alone in a nearby village. As events unfold we learn about the suspects: her obsessive research scientist husband and the self-obsessed actor who summoned police to her body. Throw in pornography, drugs, scuzzy friends, and a blossoming romance for the local policeman and you've got the recipe for a well-rounded whodunit.
This was a relatively quick read, but, as with all murder mysteries, details were important. I confess I wasn't certain about the killer's identity until the end. The plot was evenly paced and the personalities of the various characters were well presented.

I had a difficult time caring about who killed Kate Miller and why, even though the author seems to believe she's drawing me into a web of intrigue and curiosity. No. The only twist, if you like, is learning at the end just how ironic and needless the victim's death was. Motive based almost solely on misunderstanding and kooky whimsy is a new one on me, and that novelty was a nice touch, but the investigatory elements of the story were tedious and plodding.

...and not at all what I expected from Minnette Walters. Where the Dark Room and The Echo and all of her other books are intricate puzzles, bending and twisting in on themselves, this books was sadly plodding and straight forward.
At first, I found the mystery of the dead woman, and the lost little girl to be tense, but the tension rapidly disappeared into boredom. It took me two weeks to read this book, and it never takes me any more than four hours. The back and forth red herrings that led first to the husband, then to the boyfriend, and back again got tired very quickly, especially as none of teh twists were either original, or unexpected.
The only good characters were the rural policeman (his mild romance with the owner of a local stable barely keeping her head above water was the only really interesting part of the book.) and the dead woman, and then only real mystery was teh sea itself.
If you want a good mystery, read The Dark Room, or The Sculptress. Definitely skip this one.

This book is quite well-written, and keeps up the mystery and suspense for quite a long time. It shows how dogged police work, and often just plain luck, combines to solve a mysterious death. My one quibble was that, after all the convoluted twists and turns in the plot, the ending seemed rather rushed. Other than that, it's worth reading, and will keep your interst from beginning until the end.

This is a good old-fashioned whodunit mystery thriller. Minette Walters introduces the readers to the corpse almost on page one. Kate Sumner is a blonde, blue-eyed attractive young lady found naked on the Dorset coast of southern England. Shortly afterwards her three year old daughter is found all on her own wandering around the town of Poole. Her husband is way up north on business so he surely can't be a suspect - can he? By the end of the first few chapters we have any number of suspects, all interesting, maybe crazy, maybe drug addicted, maybe outwardly normal, any of whom may just be the one who did it.

In turn Walters almost convinces us and indeed the Detective Inspector, the two Detective Sergeants, the WPC and the local area policeman that each of the suspects did it. The husband is decidedly odd and his absence at the time of the crime doesn't give him a watertight alibi by any means. Nor too the young man, an actor or would-be actor, who owns a boat, poses for raunchy photos, may just be gay, but who certainly had an affair with Kate. Hie best mate, a schoolteacher who lives a in a hovel and is a generally undesirable type could also be in the frame. Then there's Kate's ex-boss who had his way with her too, consensually, late at night in the office.

The characters are painted colourfully; the scenes of the English countryside and coastline are too. It is a clever story and one that keeps you guessing until the final few pages when the truth is revealed.

Walters is an Edgar Award winning author with books translated into 32 languages. She writes with an edge that keeps the suspense flowing till the very end.
From the cliffs above, two young boys who have slipped out of the house with their parents prized binoculars find a woman viciously murdered on a deserted beach. A glib yet brazen cast of characters comes into play as we slowly watch the constable and his partners unravel the mystery that surrounds Kate Sumner's last days on this earth.
I was torn between the possibilities of the murderer being several of the characters, right up until the end; this to me is the mark of a good mystery. If you are in the mood for a good detective mystery this one will hold your attention. Simon Prebble whose deep and distinguished voice is pleasant to the ear and adds to the telling of the story, narrates the book on tape. I would give this book 3.5 stars. Kelsana 12/17/01

The Breaker by Minette Walters is an exciting murder mystery that keeps you guessing to the very end. At the beginning, Walters gives a brief suspect list, and you begin to think that you already know who the killer is, but throughout the book new developments come up that make you question your decision. The Breaker contains a very unique writing style that I had never seen before. Minette Walters includes police interviews, suspect affidavits, and investigation reports. These greatly contribute to the plot because the reader gets a new perspective, one through the eyes of the investigators and townspeople. Normally, the reader sees the story through the eyes of one of the main characters, but in The Breaker I was exposed to multiple views. These helped me to determine who the guilty party was by seeing the entire aspect of their life. If you're looking for a unique murder mystery, coupled with extensive character development and multiple plots, go out today and read The Breaker.

This story, while dealing with a dead woman who washes up on an English cove keeps you in complete suspense until the very end. Who would have wanted her dead and why? The list of suspects is long and the reasons are varied. Her husband, her mother-in-law, a young actor with a penchant for sex and pornography, a cannabis smoking school teacher obsessed with the actor, or is it someone else altogether. The clues mount up against everyone and the motives for her murder do too. It takes a calm and careful investigator to sort out all the details and PC Nick Ingram is the perfect man for the job. While there were parts of the story that were a bit too explicit for some the story fits together wonderfully, and along the way PC Ingram manages to renew a friendship with a woman whose life was turned upside down by a prior investigation. I will definitely read more Minette Walters books.