Walters creates compelling characters in The Breakers – she’s always good at serving up the weirdos. She sets up enough red herrings to keep your interest, and the two detectives – Ingram and Galbraith – are a wonderful contrast. The way she creates a picture of the dead woman, Kate Sumner, is fascinating – a composite that grows as we hear from different witnesses to and actors in her life. However, the three male characters – Harding, Bridges, and William Sumner – have been so overloaded with sexual dysfunction and/or obsession that they become caricatures rather than characters. Not one of them is credible. And Hannah, the child, doesn’t work either. There is absolutely no empathy for her situation or condition and the final words from Galbraith don’t make any kind of sense. No one in this novel likes children (except maybe Ingram), not even the constable put in charge of Hannah’s care. Which is a pity because, done well, they can shine a vivid light on the adults around them, as they do in that which we like to call real life.