★★★★☆ Broken Bones, by Angela Marsons
** Ware spoilers ** Slavery and trafficking
Broken Bones
Angela Marsons
Slavery and trafficking
There are in Broken Bones, book 7 of Angela Marsons's DI Kim Stone series, two unconnected mysteries. (I think they are unconnected, although it is possible that I have forgotten some minor point of overlap.) They are related in that both concern forced labor and trafficking. One of them has to do with the entrapment and forced labor of immigrants. The second has to do with teenage girls who are entrapped or sold into prostitution. If you've reached book 7 of the series you already know that this sort of unsavory stuff is par for the course. In fact, I found Broken Bones a little less graphically awful, a little less gag-inducingly horrifying than the previous six novels. YMMV, of course.
The mysteries are pretty good. It's not just Kim. Dev and Stacey get to be clever and figure things out. In fact, much of the story concerns Dev and Stacey's professional relationship. Dev is still feeling guilty about how Stacey got trapped in the last book, and Stacey in contrast kind of wants people to stop protecting her and treat her like the fully trained pro she is.
It was odd reading Broken Bones at this time in history. The Jeffrey Epstein scandal is having a moment in the news. I don't know whether anyone who reads this review a few years from now will remember what that was about. Epstein entrapped teenage girls and peddled them to wealthy and powerful men. He had an accomplice in English socialite Ghislaine Maxwell who helped to lure in the girls. (I am using the word "girls" not out of lack of respect, but to emphasize the point that Epstein and Maxwell trafficked children.) Broken Bones has a character who probably was not modeled after Maxwell, but could have been.
Broken Bones was a fun mystery, a little less stomach-churning than previous DI Kim Stone novels, and, as of summer 2025, unexpectedly topical. I enjoyed it.