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A Song for the Brokenhearted
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

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Published:
Little, Brown and Company 2016
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Available from OverDrive
Description
The earthshaking decade of the 1960s comes to a sweeping and dangerous close, as William Shaw's detective duo battle the most powerful members of London society.
After being wounded in the line of duty, Detective Sergeant Breen recuperates on the family farm of his former partner, Helen Tozer. To fill the long and empty hours, he reviews the open case file for a murder that has haunted Helen for years: that of her younger sister. Breen discovers that the teenage victim had been having a secret affair with James Fletchet, the son of an affluent local landowner, celebrated for his service in Kenya during the Mau Mau Uprising.
Breen and Tozer return to London's Criminal Investigation Division, where their questions about Fletchet's past are met with resistance and suspicion. The deeper they probe, the more people they implicate in their investigation. New Scotland Yard doesn't look kindly upon breaking rank, and it's only a matter of time before Breen and Tozer make themselves a target.
Shaw's stirring, heartfelt and diabolically plotted mystery series is everything a reader looks for: enveloping, invigorating, and wonderfully entertaining.
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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
01/19/2016
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780316246897, 9780316366229
ASIN:
B00X47ZNLM
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

William Shaw. (2016). A Song for the Brokenhearted. Little, Brown and Company.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

William Shaw. 2016. A Song for the Brokenhearted. Little, Brown and Company.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

William Shaw, A Song for the Brokenhearted. Little, Brown and Company, 2016.

MLA Citation (style guide)

William Shaw. A Song for the Brokenhearted. Little, Brown and Company, 2016.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Grouped Work ID:
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Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 19:03:03
Date Updated:
Mar 16, 2023 00:38:13
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May 12, 2024 10:46:52
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      • bioText: William Shaw is an award-winning music journalist and the author of several non-fiction books including Westsiders: Stories of the Boys in the Hood. Prior to becoming a crime writer, he worked at the post-punk magazine ZigZag and a journalist for The Observer, The New York Times, Wired, Arena, and The Face. He lives in Sussex, England.
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title
A Song for the Brokenhearted
fullDescription
The earthshaking decade of the 1960s comes to a sweeping and dangerous close, as William Shaw's detective duo battle the most powerful members of London society.
After being wounded in the line of duty, Detective Sergeant Breen recuperates on the family farm of his former partner, Helen Tozer. To fill the long and empty hours, he reviews the open case file for a murder that has haunted Helen for years: that of her younger sister. Breen discovers that the teenage victim had been having a secret affair with James Fletchet, the son of an affluent local landowner, celebrated for his service in Kenya during the Mau Mau Uprising.
Breen and Tozer return to London's Criminal Investigation Division, where their questions about Fletchet's past are met with resistance and suspicion. The deeper they probe, the more people they implicate in their investigation. New Scotland Yard doesn't look kindly upon breaking rank, and it's only a matter of time before Breen and Tozer make themselves a target.
Shaw's stirring, heartfelt and diabolically plotted mystery series is everything a reader looks for: enveloping, invigorating, and wonderfully entertaining.
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      • premium: False
      • source: Library Journal (starred review)
      • content: A reminder of the multiple joys of [a] police procedural with quirky characters, crisp dialog, and, in this case, a healthy dose of period detail . . . Spread the word.
      • premium: False
      • source: C.J. Sansom, bestselling author of the Matthew Shardlake Series and Winter in Madrid
      • content: A first-rate police thriller set amidst the seamy underside of the swinging sixties....The totemic year of '68 will never seem the same again.
      • premium: False
      • source: Linda Fairstein, New York Times-bestselling author of Death Game and Night Watch
      • content: A haunting look at the 60's . . . The dialogue is razor-sharp and the London scene is brilliantly authentic.
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        Starred review from November 23, 2015
        Set in 1969, British author Shaw’s superb conclusion to his crime trilogy (following 2015’s The Kings of London) finds the recently wounded Det. Sgt. Cathal “Paddy” Breen convalescing at the family farm of his former police partner, Helen Tozer, in Devon. Breen, eager to get back to police work, agrees, unofficially, to look into the murder of Helen’s 16-year-old sister, Alexandra, which occurred almost five years earlier, when it’s discovered that Alexandra had an affair with a wealthy—and married—peer of the realm. Helen and Breen uncover a plot that leads to Africa during the Kenya Emergency, a real event that involved the torture and murder of those suspected of being part of the Mau Mau uprising. Shaw picks up multiple plot threads, expertly weaving them into a complex story that explores the darkest parts of the human psyche and the erosion of one man’s humanity, while balancing the delicate and awkwardly sweet relationship between the traditional Breen and decidedly untraditional Helen, as well as her relationship with her still grieving parents. Shaw perfectly captures the end of an uneasy era, and the utterly terrifying final scene will leave readers breathless. Agent: Karolina Sutton, Curtis Brown.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        November 15, 2015
        A cold case involving a former police officer's sister becomes linked to a current series of gruesome murders in 1969 London. After taking a bullet to the shoulder in The Kings of London (2015), DS Cathal "Paddy" Breen recuperates in the Devon countryside with ex-DC Helen Tozer, his onetime colleague who left the police to help out on her family farm. Going slowly stir crazy without his work and the hustle of London, Breen distracts himself by unofficially looking into the unsolved case that's haunted Helen for five years: the rape and murder of her 16-year-old sister, Alexandra. Breen discovers missing pages in the police files and learns that there was a coverup involving a sergeant who's conveniently since transferred to the Met's Drug Squad and a wealthy landowner, James Fletchet, who was having a secret affair with Alexandra. Returning to London for the full story, Breen looks up his old friend DS John Carmichael, also part of the Drug Squad, who tells him that the former Devon copper, Sgt. Bill Milkwood, is the golden boy of the squad. As Breen digs deeper, uncovering potential ties between the years Milkwood and Fletchet spent in Kenya during the 1950s and the bloody times known as the Emergency and Alexandra's murder, Milkwood goes missing, and Breen fears that whoever killed Helen's sister is at it again. Despite the fact that he's on sick leave for most of the novel, Breen is the most active, engaged, and compelling that he's been thus far in the series. In this conclusion to a thoroughly gripping trilogy, Shaw draws incisive attention to little-known historical events and crafts a wholly satisfying thriller.

        COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        Starred review from December 15, 2015
        In the 1960s, Paddy Breen, recuperating from a gunshot wound, is staying at former partner Helen Tozer's family farm. Both Paddy and Helen yearn for the hustle of London and the urgency of unsolved crimes. After weeks of skirting the elephant in the room, Helen asks Breen to take a look into her teenage sister's gruesome murder four years past. It's clear that the locals worked the case diligently, but they came nowhere close to finding Alexandra Tozer's killer. All 14 of their suspects were cleared, but Breen is troubled that the file on Alexandra's married lover, Lord James Fletchet, is missing. Then Fletchet's close friend from their days fighting the Mau Mau in Kenya is tortured and killed in the same way as Alexandra, and Breen is certain that Fletchet is the key to both killings. Shaw raises the bar with each entry in this series, which explores the tension between traditionalism and the 1960s social-justice movements, this time drawing clever parallels between English farms and the violent land disputes in Kenya. Against a backdrop of taut suspense and occasionally raw violence, Paddy and Helen continue trying to work out their feelings for each other, which deepen in fits and starts with each novel. A genre-bending psychological thriller, perfect for those who like Elizabeth George's Lynley novels.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

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shortDescription
The earthshaking decade of the 1960s comes to a sweeping and dangerous close, as William Shaw's detective duo battle the most powerful members of London society.
After being wounded in the line of duty, Detective Sergeant Breen recuperates on the family farm of his former partner, Helen Tozer. To fill the long and empty hours, he reviews the open case file for a murder that has haunted Helen for years: that of her younger sister. Breen discovers that the teenage victim had been having a secret affair with James Fletchet, the son of an affluent local landowner, celebrated for his service in Kenya during the Mau Mau Uprising.
Breen and Tozer return to London's Criminal Investigation Division, where their questions about Fletchet's past are met with resistance and suspicion. The deeper they probe, the more people they implicate in their investigation. New Scotland Yard doesn't look kindly upon breaking rank, and it's only a matter of time before Breen and Tozer make...
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      • description: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Police Procedural
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