Within the sanctity of the confessional booth at St. Brendan’s Church, Philadelphia a man admits to the parish priest, and not for the first time, that he has wilful impure thoughts about young boys. The priest is angry but, bound by his commitment to the church and to God, knows he can never reveal the man’s sins to the police without being instantly ex-communicated. And there are other secrets at St Brendan’s High School. Enough to get young Joey Delgado savagely beaten when he lets something slip. Enough for a dead body to be propped up next to the ancient tree that stands guard beside the student dormitory. And now the campus is in chaos.
Following on from her previous novel Easy Promises, Abby Reilly continues the stories of the Flannigan clan and their place in the Philly neighborhood in which BROKEN PROMISES is set. For those coming to the series for the first time, Reilly helpfully summarizes the characters in an early paragraph as they are gathered together after Sunday mass. There is “easy going patriarch Patrick, compassionate matriarch Olivia, police patrol man and eldest son Liam, frustrated Irish musician masquerading as a lawyer middle son Bryce, and green-eyed siren, head chef, baby sister Darcy.” Though crime, detection and legal troubles feature strongly in the novel by means of some of the protagonists’ professions this is more a saga of the Irish diaspora than a straight procedural mystery. There is as much time spent on romance and relationship dramas as there is on the crimes that act as the spine to the story. Reilly is a capable writer and tells her story with skill, juggling a number of well drawn characters, each with their own narrative arcs, and pulling their stories together around a solid central crime plot. For straight mystery book readers there may be a little too much attention given to the Flannigan family dynamics and sometimes the novel tilts towards the stylings of a soap opera with a negative impact on its pace and tension.
BROKEN PROMISES is an easy going mystery centered on priests, policemen and lawyers in a Philadelphia neighborhood and while the ongoing Flannigan clan dramas sometimes overshadow the well-constructed crime story at the heart of the novel, Abby Reilly’s prose is engaging and enjoyable.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader