All of Us Are Broken – Fiona Cummins

The electrifying crime novel featuring DS Saul Anguish from the award winning author, Fiona Cummins, author of Into the Dark, When I Was Ten and Rattle.

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 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.

Book Info: 316 pages. Publisher: Macmillan. Publication Date: 20 July 2023

About the author

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.

My Review:

If you have read any of Fiona Cummins’ previous books then you will know to expect dark, disturbing and gripping thrillers and her latest book All Of Us Are Broken is no exception.

Into the Dark was the first book in this new series, and whilst both books can be read as standalone, I would definitely recommend starting with book 1.

This book has the most powerful, heart-breaking, heart-racing, horrific opening chapter I think I have ever read and from that point onwards All Of Us Are Broken becomes “unputdownable”.

With so many fascinating characters, this book gets right under your skin. If you aren’t feeling sympathy and love towards the family who are faced with an impossible decision, then you are feeling horrified and disbelief towards the pair of criminals determined to become famous for all the wrong reasons.

With multi-layered plotlines that seamlessly come together towards the end, this book is a masterclass in crime thrillers.

Having recently read and thoroughly enjoyed Into the Dark, it was great to see DC Saul Anguish grow as a character and also to see how his relationship with Blue develops in the latest book. Eagle-eyed readers might remember Saul from The Collector in 2017 and it’s fascinating to watch him justify his darker side to himself as he tries to control his emotions throughout the series.

In a nutshell, if you enjoy dark and gripping crime thrillers with plenty of violence, moral dilemmas, senseless murders, damaged individuals and enough tension to keep you turning those pages, then I would highly recommend this book.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Find this book on Amazon