This is Tana French’s fourth Dublin Murder Squad book. Mick Kennedy, called Scorcher, is the squad’s top closer, a by-the-book man who believes hard work and rules keep the dark out. He catches a case at Brianstown, a half-finished housing estate on the coast north of Dublin — a few families living among empty shells and unpaved roads. Pat Spain and his two kids are dead in the house. His wife Jenny is barely alive. There are holes punched through the walls and baby monitors pointed at them, and Pat, out of work for a year, had been hunting something he was convinced was living in the attic. Then it turns out the estate sits on the beach where Mick’s family used to holiday, and where his mother walked into the water and committed suicide. He’s the wrong man for this and of course he takes the case anyway.