I listen to a lot of audiobooks — I walk or run about 40 miles a week, plus I like to listen to audiobooks while cleaning or cooking instead of having the tv on. I alternate between two genres, usually. I prefer audiobooks when tackling dense non-fiction subjects, because I know I tend to skim if I’m reading such things in text form, and British crime novels — the accents alone are worth the download. The Breakdown, which refers not only to the broken down car that leads to a woman’s murder, but also the subsequent slow unraveling of our main character’s mind, fits that second category nicely.
A woman named Cass, recently orphaned and recently married, spies a woman in a car on the side of a deserted road late one night. She pulls over, but stays in the car due to a terrible rainstorm. When the woman fails to indicate that she needs help, Cass drives on. She forgets all about it until she hears that the woman has been murdered. Ashamed that she didn’t stop to help, Cass keeps her sighting to herself. Then strange things begin to happen — she feels stalked, she’s getting hang up calls, things are moved around the house. And Cass keeps forgetting things, losing things. Is the murderer doing this to her, or is her (hidden) family history of dementia catching up to her?
The author does a great job of keeping the reader guessing — is Cass being stalked? Gaslit? Or just losing her mind? Between the odd twists and turns of the case, Cass’s uncertain (and full of secrets) relationship with her new husband, and her own tenuous memory — it’s hard to tell what exactly is happening, and what Cass might be imaging. It probably won’t be the kind of book I’ll remember a couple of years from now, but it kept me in its grip while I listened.
