The Broken Ones

June 25, 2012
Irwin (The Dead Path) works a highly original idea—an unexplained cosmic catastrophe has left everyone in the world haunted by a persistent personal ghost that only they can see—into an engrossing hard-boiled thriller. When Oscar Mariani, a detective with the Nine-Ten Investigation Unit, which specializes in crimes related to the ghost sightings, looks into the brutal mutilation murder of a young woman, he discovers a strange symbol with apparent occult import carved into her flesh. As Oscar follows the trail of clues, a series of related murders suggests that corrupt and entitled parties are attempting a coverup that will threaten Oscar as well. The link between the murders and the ghostly hauntings proves as ingeniously imagined as the novel’s premise. Irwin’s depiction of a world falling apart under the onslaught of supernatural forces, and the desperate measures some will take to remedy it, is one of the more memorable in recent weird fiction.

Starred review from November 1, 2012
In the strange, devastating aftermath of Gray Wednesday, when the Earth's poles suddenly switched, the world is in even greater chaos, climatic distress and financial ruin than it is now. Not only are people struggling for survival, most of them are shadowed by a ghost. In most cases, it's the ghost of a relative or friend, but for tormented Australian cop Oscar Mariani, the specter is an unknown 16-year-old boy. The son of a storied cop, Mariani works for forever dank and gloomy Brisbane's special Nine-Ten unit, which determines whether a homicide suspect was driven to commit the crime by the maddening presence of a ghost. If so, it's a pardonable offense. Oscar has a vested interest in solving the grisly killing of a girl found ripped apart in a sewage plant, a weird religious symbol carved into her stomach. He has never gotten over the guilt of maiming another teenage girl when he swerved to avoid a boy in the road--the boy, as it turns out, who is now haunting him. When Oscar's dirty superiors order him to back off the case, which involves the abduction, torture and murder of disabled girls from a nursing home, he goes rogue, losing his loyal female partner on the force in the process. It's not enough for him to get beat up, shot and hailed on. In a frightening scene, huge, vulturelike creatures maul him. In the striking retro future of this novel, bizarre and familiar comfortably coincide. A flawlessly assembled thriller.

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June 1, 2012

The world is reeling from a natural disaster that occurred a few years earlier. In just one day, Earth's poles shifted to affect climate, agriculture, and governmental infrastructure and setting off a global economic crisis. This event is known as Gray Wednesday, the day when the spectral and living worlds became one. Set in Australia, Irwin's (The Dead Path) novel is a dystopian tale of crime and the supernatural. Each person is haunted by a ghost, someone from his or her past. However, the identity of the ghost that haunts Det. Oscar Mariani is unknown to him. Mariani is no typical cop: he works only with those who claim to have committed their crimes--murders--at the direction of their ghosts. In a haunted world, Mariani must track down a serial killer who is murdering young women and mutilating their bodies with cryptic occult symbols. VERDICT Genre-bending and imaginative, Irwin's sophomore novel is part fantasy, part supernatural crime thriller. Similar in style and content to the works of Cherie Priest and Richard Matheson, this will appeal to a variety of genre readers who enjoy intelligent fiction that pushes boundaries.--Carolann Curry, Mercer Univ. Medical Lib., Macon, GA

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2012
Blending the supernatural thriller with hard-boiled crime fiction, Australian Irwin, in his second novel, which follows the acclaimed The Dead Path (2010), depicts a bleak future. Three years after Grey Wednesday, on which the earth's poles suddenly switched, unemployment is rampant, while food and goods are in short supply. Perhaps most devastating of all, however, was the appearance of the ghosts. All are now haunted by the eyeless specters of people they once knew. As a result, suicide and murder rates have skyrocketed, and a unit has been created within the police department to exonerate perpetrators driven to murder by their ghosts. Rumpled, dogged detective Oscar Mariani works in that unit. He is poorly paid, constantly under threat of being shut down, and disrespected by mainstream policemen, many of whom are corrupt. But then he catches the case of a young woman whose body has been badly mutilated and marked with occult signs, and he is convinced her murder is connected to the highest levels of government. How he goes about solving his case while weighed down with guilt over his failed personal relationships provides much of the suspense in a story that also offers cinematic descriptions of a rain-drenched, ruined Brisbane and smoothly incorporated supernatural elements. A unique and thrilling blend of horror and crime.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)