How can you tell if someone is telling the truth or not? Can you explain human behavior in terms of the interactions of various components of personality? Let us talk about this book, a psychological thriller, and guess who's the criminal.

THE BREAKER - by Minette Walters

Just a short summary of the novel.

She drifted with the waves, falling off their rolling backs and waking to renewed agony every time saltwater seared down her throat and into her stomach. During intermittent periods of lucidity when she revisited, always with astonishment, what had happened to her, it was the deliberate breaking of her fingers that remained indelibly printed on her memory and not the brutality of her rape.

The child sat cross-legged on the floor like a miniature statue of Buddha, the grey dawn light leeching her flesh of color. He had no feelings for her, not even common humanity, but he couldn't bring himself to touch her, and he was enthralled by her immobility. He could break her neck as easily as a chicken, but he fancied he saw ancient wisdom in her concentrated gaze, and the idea frightened him. Did she know what he'd done?

Twelve hours after a woman's body is washed up on a deserted shore, her traumatized three-year-old daughter is discovered 20 miles away alone and apparently abandoned.

Brothers Paul and Daniel Spender are exploring near Chapman’s Pool on the Dorset Coast when they come upon a woman whom they think while sunbathing in nude. It's not long, though, before Paul, the older of the two brothers, notices that the woman has not moved and that in fact, she’s dead. They give the alarm, and PC Nick Ingram is soon called to the scene. When he arrives, he meets the Spender boys and Stephen Harding, an actor who’s traveling in the area and who actually reported the death to the police. Also on the scene is Maggie Jenner, a local stable and boarding-facility owner who’s been out riding. When her dog runs off and comes upon Harding and the Spender boys, she gets drawn into the investigation as well.

While Ingram is beginning the process of finding out who the dead woman is, another mystery is unfolding in the nearby town of Poole. A small child,  not even three years old, is wandering the streets, apparently unsupervised. A local couple notices the child and takes her to the police station, where WPC Sandra Griffiths puts into motion the process of finding out who the little girl is and what she’s doing wandering around alone. Hannah is strangely unresponsive and an assessment of the child suggests that she has suffered psychological trauma. The police broadcast the child’s photograph on television and by chance, Angela Sumner sees the picture and recognizes the toddler as her granddaughter, Hannah Sumner. She calls her son William, Hannah’s father, and before long, he’s in touch with the police.

When William Sumner arrives at Poole to identify Hannah, the two threads of this case come together. Sumner’s worried about his wife, Kate, who should have been with Hannah, and who seems to have disappeared. His description of Kate matches the description of the dead woman whose case the Dorset police are investigating, and it’s soon established that the body is Kate’s. Somehow, Kate and Hannah got separated and Kate ended up raped, choked, drugged, and drowned on the beach near Chapman’s Pool.

Nick Ingram, DI John Galbraith, WPC Griffiths, and Superintendent Carpenter begin to work together to find out how and why Kate Sumner died. They interview her co-workers, friends, and relations to try to piece together what happened, and as they do, three likely suspects emerge. One is her husband, William Sumner, who can’t really account for his time during the murder, who lies about his wife’s private life and who wasn’t as happily married to Kate as it seemed on the surface. Another is Stephen Harding, a sexually-obsessed actor with whom Kate flirted more than once. A third is Harding’s room-mate, teacher Tony Bridges, who knew Kate better than he admits to the police. But at the end of the investigation of the police and detectives, the suspect is Stephen Harding, a sexually obsessed actor who was arrested.

Just a Theory

Psycho-analytical Theory

It's often difficult to understand a crime, either real or fictional without understanding the personalities of the people involved in the crime. Very often, those personalities are keys to the motive for murder as well as clues to the murderer.

The story of the Breaker is based on a Psychoanalytical theory. here are some lines that will support the said theory.

"How was I hard to him Miss Jenner?" "oh come on! You all but accused him of lying." he was lying " nick Ingram said.

" what about? "

" I'm not sure yet" I know when I've made a few inquiries. "Is this a male thing? "probably" I could hardly avoid it. He wasn't wearing that shorts to disguise anything perhaps, it was his wallet. There was a precious little room for it anywhere else. "didn't you find it interesting?".

This is a psychoanalytical theory because I think it deals with how the characters think in the story.

Several elements tie this story together, one of them is the painstaking work that is a police investigation. Throughout the novel, the detectives conduct interviews, gather and make some forensic and other evidence and slowly build their case. They draw the wrong conclusions at times and when they do find out what really happened, it's not because of magical discovery. Rather it's the process of sifting through the evidence and clues and tying together various things that witnesses have said. In that sense, this is a police procedural we follow along with the police as they pursue their leads and work on the case.

Another very important element that runs throughout the novel is characterization. So in that sense, this novel is a psychological crime novel. The various aspects of Kate's character unfold slowly as the police find out more and more about her. For instance, we gradually learn what kind of men William Sumner, Stephen Harding, and Tony Bridges are, and why each of them is tied up in this murder investigation. As the police e interview these men and talk to the people live in their lives we see a slowly developing portrait of each person. Through this process, we also get a psychological profile of the kind of person who would commit the rape and murder crime that killed Kate Sumner and also get to know a little about Hannah Sumner and we learn might be behind her strange behavior.

The ongoing, sometimes frustrating police investigation and the slowly - unfolding psychological portraits of the characters tie the various strands of the novel together. So do the Dorset and Hampshire settings where the most action takes place. These elements underlie the story and add important layers of interest and tension as the investigator gets close to the truth about Kate's Sumner murder.

Reflection

Everything feels quite cursory. We meet a cast of characters, but never quite get to know any on a level that would allow for connection and concern for their fates. The three police officers involved bleed into one lump, and at times it's difficult to remember who is who. All of the suspects are pathetic, miserable men who have thrown away their lives, and the child involved is by turns annoying and creepy. The victim is quickly revealed to be a greedy, grasping woman, and the side plot involving old money women fallen on hard times is fairly by-the-numbers, and while it shows a glimmer of interest here and there, it is ultimately rushed to a quick and unsatisfying conclusion.

There is little detecting going on in this mystery, as the entire cases of the story is driven me by what the suspects and people who know or have observed them say. Much of the time it feels like a very artificial, " Okay, now I'm going to assume this person is the killer, and now him, and now him." When the reveal finally happens, while it is disappointingly the very person the novel appears to be pointing to from the very first pages, it reads very much to me like a last-minute rush to a conclusion. For me, The reveal comes crashing down in a rush of information, some of which is entirely new and does not appear to fit with what we know from the rest of the story. Without a better foundation of clues laid, the ending falls quite flat.

And as much as I enjoyed the small moments between Nick Ingram and Maggie Jenner, there simply isn't enough room for their relationship within the plot. Walters provides a smattering of moments that are clearly supposed to provide enough for the reader to fill in the details, but some of it especially Nick's baffling insistence that painting someone's house is a form of courting simply does not have enough in-text proof to suggest any depth between them. Their resolution, too, is rush to the conclusion.

Ultimately, I was propelled through the novel mostly because I wanted to find out if I was right about the killer. And that's it I enjoy reading this novel. 

The Characters

Kate Sumner - The dead women who had been raped and strangled. She is the mother of Hannah and the wife of William.

William Sumner - Husband of Kate Sumner.

Hannah - The three-year-old daughter of Kate Sumner and William Sumner.

PC Nick Ingram - A uniformed police constable in a tiny police station on the Isle of Purbeck who fell in love with Maggie. His investigation reacquainted him with stable yard owner Maggie.

Maggie Jenner - A local stable and boarding facility owner, Nick Ingram admires her natural, equine, and human beauty she lives with her mother. and later on, fell in love with Ingram's charm.

Stephen Harding - The obvious suspect. A young actor, a handsome loner obsessed with pornography whom Kate flirted more than once.

Tony Bridge - A friend of Stephen, respected high school chemistry teacher

Celia Jenner - Mother of Maggie Jenner.

Angela Sumner- mother of William

Paul and Daniel- Spender brothers who saw the dead body of Kate using their binocular.

Detective Inspector John Galbraith-The detective who investigated the case of Kate's murder.

Detective Superintendent Carpenter- He also investigated Kate's murder together with PC Ingram and DI Galbraith.

WPC Sandra Graffiths- Police stable who is on duty when Mr.and Mrs. Green reported the child which is Hannah Sumner saw on the road alone.

Photos are mine.
just a story analysis.
Thank you for reading.