This is a very good novel, and the audiobook is wonderful. Not to be placed in any one genre, this novel includes quite a few of them, and to great effect. I enjoyed the heck out of it, and this review covers how I feel much better:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/575365056?book_show_action=false&from_...

Grant Cartwright is the narrator, and he’s very good also.
4 stars, and recommended to anyone who doesn’t mind some gore. ( )

So where to start? I always try to finish a book but I just couldn't with this so I've had to put it aside. It could be temporary but it feels more permanent than that so for the first time in three years I've left a book unfinished - I gave it 180 pages and 17 chapters but never got into it. Anything I could do to avoid reading it - checking tweets or facebook, watching The Wire. I need an antidote. The supernatural element was boring to be honest. Everyone has their own personal ghost - if it's that common it isn't going to spark anything. The bleak landscape reminds of Bladerunner without the cool parts - flying cars & androids. I guess the dystopian vision isn't for me and I really wanted to like it but didn't.

It is difficult to write a mash-up between dark fantasy and a police procedural. There must always be a temptation to bring in a deus-ex-machina to solve difficult plot points, as well as to keep the mystery fair, so that a reader can make a good, educated guess as to how the mystery will be resolved. Irwin accomplishes the blending of the genres to excellent effect in The Broken Ones by Stephen M. Irwin.

Irwin tells us in the first three pages of the book that Gray Wednesday was three years ago, on September 10 (the year is unstated). That was the day the earth’s magnetic poles switched, causing every plane then in the air to plummet to the earth when their navigation systems failed. All post-Cold War satellites similarly failed and fell, making global telecommunications cease functioning. The world plunged into an economic depression, with unemployment as high as 30% in some countries — at least those where data is obtainable; Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and a number of other countries have closed their borders completely. Energy is in short supply and manufacturing has taken a downturn. Food is difficult to come by, setting off a spike in inflation. Weather patterns have changed dramatically, with average temperatures increasing by seven degrees Fahrenheit. Governments are still in place, but they’re struggling.

But the worst change to come with the shifting of the poles was the ghosts. Every person has a ghost, and only that person can see his or her own ghost. Some of the ghosts are familiar faces to the person they haunt; some are strangers. But that ghost is there all the time, watching, not through normal eyes, but spirals that constantly turn, like whirlpools.
Oscar Mariani is a police officer in this unhappy world, and is perhaps even unhappier than the average citizen. He is divorced, but still loves the ex-wife who has since remarried and had a child. He has a dead end job in a squad called the Barelies, so called because the real name of their unit, the Nine-Ten Investigation Unit, sounds enough like “19” that they remind coarse-minded cops of women who are barely old enough to consent to sex (that is, they’re “barely legal”). The unit is named for the September 10 addition of ghosts to the world, which have caused their own sort of insanity. The ghosts drive some people to try to murder them, and often someone else gets in the way. The police hate this unit, which they see as relieving guilty people of proper punishment. And sometimes it is, in fact, an excuse, as in the crime Oscar is called to investigate in the first chapter of the book.

Oscar has wound up in this dead-end because in his previous position with the Ethical Standards Division he went after a corrupt but powerful fellow officer, Inspector Haig, and failed to bring him down. His position is worse, and Haig is even more powerful, than would have been the case had Oscar never made the attempt. And now it appears that the Nine-Ten Investigation Unit is about to be eliminated, having dwindled over time to Oscar and one other officer, Neve de Rossa.

But they catch one last case. A woman’s body — at least what remains of it — has been discovered at a public works plant, caught in a huge industrial auger. Her face has been torn off by the machinery, as have several of her limbs, and it does not seem like it will be possible to identify her. On her stomach has been carved a complex symbol, or series of symbols, in a seven-pointed star. Oscar believes this symbol is a sufficient connection to the occult to require his unit to keep the case, to the chagrin of Neve, the anger of Haig and the resigned go-ahead from their boss, Moechtar.

Things start to go awry in the investigation almost immediately. First, the body is shipped off for cremation before an autopsy can be performed. Oscar, suspecting deliberate sabotage, gets to the body at the last moment before it can be consigned to the fire, and takes it to a butcher shop, where a rather shady friend does an autopsy. He also closely photographs the symbol carved into the woman’s flesh, and undertakes to find out what it can mean.

The novel takes off like a rocket from there, but I’ll leave the many plot turns for you to discover. The plot is complicated and convoluted, but it never seems to be so for the mere purpose of complication; to the contrary, each twist arises organically from the investigation. When coincidence raises its head, as it seems to do in most mysteries, it does not seem artificial, but again, proceeds naturally from what has gone before. Irwin has much firmer control of his much more complicated plot in this, his sophomore effort after The Dead Path. Oscar is an excellent character, a man of his new world, a man of what seems to be extreme integrity in a world that no longer seems to consider that a positive trait. The atmospherics of the novel are intense and well-drawn, with the grayness of that Gray Monday pervading Oscar’s world in every way. But best of all, this is both a full-fledged mystery and a complete horror novel. Irwin plays fair with his readers within the confines of the universe he has created, down to the last detail.

Originally published at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/horrible-monday-the-broken-ones-by-step.... ( )

You may also read my review here: http://www.mybookishways.com/2012/09/the-broken-ones-by-stephen-m-irwin.html

Oscar Mariani is an investigator with the “Barelies”. Let me explain: the Nine-Ten Investigation Unit was created 3 years ago (after Gray Wendesday), and it sounded enough like “nineteen” that it became the Barely Legals, shortened to the “Barelies”. Oscar continually has to endure the indignity of being part of an investigation unit that isn’t taken seriously, and also the ghost of a little boy that’s been haunting him since Gray Wednesday. Gray Wednesday left the world in shambles and in its wake, also left everyone with a ghost of their own.

Oscar and his partner Neve find the body of a young girl in the sewer system, laid open by an enormous industrial auger. The mutilation wasn’t enough to cover a symbol carved into the girl’s stomach. This case should have been passed to the Homicide unit, but Mariani decides to investigate it himself. Neve isn’t so enthusiastic, and isn’t afraid to show it. She soon puts in for a transfer, but it’s clear that she’s conflicted. As Oscar follows the clues, he begins to uncover something that can only be described as pure evil. At continuous risk of losing his job, the case will take him first to a home for disabled children, the Heights, a sparkling walled enclave where the elite dwell, and finally into an occult underground that will take him nearly beyond his emotional and physical endurance.

To say that I loved this book would be an understatement. Oscar Mariani is my favorite kind of protagonist: wounded, deeply moral, and determined to see things put right. When Gray Wednesday hit, his ghost appeared in front of him while driving on a busy street, and in trying to avoid what he thought was a real person in front of him, he swerved to avoid him, and struck a young girl. The pain that he carries with him because of this, and its aftermath, is palpable on nearly every page. The author set his story against a future Australia that is broken, dark, and bereft of hope, to nearly all except for the very wealthy. Power is spotty, government support is very limited, and struggling to get by is an understatement.

“The roads were empty of traffic, but not empty of cars: both sides were lined with vehicles, some of the festooned with faded bouquets of parking tickets. Most had smashed windows, a few were no more than burned shells, all of them had been stripped of wheels, seats, mirrors-anything that could be removed in hasted and peddled. Sump boxes were cracked open and their oil drained for use in lamps. Driving was a luxury few outside of the Heights could afford. Half the cars in the city-half the cars around the world, Oscar supposed-had been dented or crashed on Gray Wednesday. His own car had gained a dent on the front. Oscar drew down another shutter on that memory.”

Amidst the ruin, Oscar is a beacon, whether he wants to be or not. His quest (and it is a quest) to see things right is fraught with danger and figuring out who can be trusted is no small task. A complicated relationship with his adoptive, ex-cop father is a fulcrum on which he swings, and we’re given small glimpses into that relationship throughout the story. The Broken Ones is not for the faint of heart, however. There’s nothing gratuitous here, but the author absolutely does not pull punches, and there were a few times that I had to look away and catch my breath. The language he uses is just beautiful, even when describing the most gruesome scenes:

“This curtain was woven with the bones and skulls of ten thousand people. Femurs and rib bones were the weft, and humeri and ulnae the warp. Skulls were ivory sequins. This awful drapery was the source of the sick, eldritch light-and behind it was a yawning darkness more terrible than the narrow, blind confusion he’d left behind. He knew he had to go. Then the curtain rippled. The bilious light shimmered, and he heard an unmusical tinkle, the discord of a thousand untuned pianos as bone ticked against bone. Something was on the other side. Something huge. It was coming.”

There is one particular scene in The Broken Ones that absolutely terrified me. I’m talking about “watching-the-scariest-movie” muscle clenching horror. I held my breath for two whole pages. It’s been a long time since a book has had that effect on me, and frankly, it was awesome. To pigeonhole The Broken Ones into one genre would be very inaccurate. It’s a combination of supernatural thriller, police procedural, horror, and dystopian…and it works. Oh boy, does it work! Stephen M. Irwin puts his characters through the emotional and physical ringers, and doesn’t spare his reader either. I felt wrung out when I finished this novel, but in the best way, the way you feel like when you’ve finished a wonderful book, and discovered a new to you author that has just blown you away. I can’t help but hope there will be more of Oscar Mariani in future books, but if not, that’ s ok too, because The Broken Ones is a gem and stands perfectly on its own. Very, very highly recommended. ( )

Very evocative genre-bending ghost story / crime thriller. However, I feel the adherence to familiar techniques of crime fiction is at the expense of the horror and ghost elements at times. If you are fan of detective fiction but would never consider the horror genre, then this novel might just be the crossover story for you. I'm a fan of dystopian fiction, and the world where everyone has a ghost following them (causing much social and economic chaos) is expertly rendered. Certainly this novel will make me keep an eye out for Stephen M. Irwin's next book, just to see what his imagination comes up with. ( )