53 pages • 1 hour read
Jennifer MoorheadBroken Bayou
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Genre Context: Psychological Thrillers
Broken Bayou is an example of the psychological thriller—a sub-genre that combines elements from both thrillers and works of psychological realism. Psychological thrillers are often character-driven as well as suspense-driven, feature protagonists who experience psychological distress, and explore the way that those mental and emotional states impact thoughts, perceptions, and decision-making processes. Fear, anxiety, and tension are often key textual undercurrents, and they drive narrative drama. Psychological thrillers often explore dark themes related to death and dying, existential crises, perception and reality, and the mind as a site of both analytical acumen and psychological unraveling. Characters in psychological thrillers are often engaged in serious inner struggles and are forced to confront difficult, even dangerous circumstances.
Psychological thrillers typically feature plot twists such as Willa’s abrupt realization that Travis, not his brother Doyle, is the area’s serial killer or her surprise revelation that her sister Mabry, whom she has been phoning and texting for the entirety of the novel, is actually deceased and died by suicide. Psychological thrillers also often employ unreliable narrators, characters whose version of events is not necessarily trustworthy. While Willa is not intentionally deceptive, she hides the truth about Mabry’s death from the reader because she has been unwilling to admit it to herself. Psychological thrillers also often employ red herrings—clues that are intended to mislead or distract. In Broken Bayou, the license plate that Doyle leaves for Willa seems to function as both a threat to Willa and an indication of Doyle’s guilt, but it is ultimately revealed as Doyle’s attempt to covertly implicate his brother in the town’s serial murders.
Examples of psychological thrillers abound in both literature and film. Patricia Highsmith is one author of classic psychological thrillers. Her novels Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley are often cited as foundational works of the genre. Strangers on a Train features a complex, suspenseful plot and uses murder as a way to meditate on the nature of guilt. A successful novel in its own right, it was also adapted into a popular film by noted maker of suspense films Alfred Hitchcock. The Talented Mr. Ripley examines fraud and identity theft and uses paranoia, also a common feature of psychological thrillers, to provide a window into its protagonist’s inner world. This novel was also adapted for film by director Anthony Minghella in 1999 and became a 2023 Netflix limited series titled Ripley. More recent examples include the works of Steven King and Freida McFadden, whose 2024 novel The Teacher showcases the impact of abuse and psychological manipulation and features a series of twists and turns that keep the reader guessing.
Genre Context: Crime Fiction
Crime fiction is a sub-genre of literature in which the plot focuses on criminal acts and investigation by amateurs, professional investigators, or law enforcement officers. Crime fiction employs suspense and mystery to keep readers engaged and typically focuses on the crime and its investigative aftermath rather than any post-arrest events or legal procedures. Crime fiction often revolves around a murder, although narratives that feature sexual assaults, stalking, white-collar crime, and other offenses are also common. The serial murders in Broken Bayou and the mystery surrounding the identity of the area’s serial killer allow the novel to be read as an example of crime fiction, as do its use of several key tropes of the genre. Crime fiction often features troubled investigators. Detectives, private investigators, and amateur investigators who struggle with alcohol addiction are a common feature, and Willa’s reliance on alcohol as a way to self-medicate fits within this pattern. Plot twists and red herrings, also used in psychological fiction, characterize crime fiction as well. In this regard, Broken Bayou also conforms to broader genre conventions. Many works of crime fiction feature law enforcement officers who are either incompetent, impede the investigation in some way, or are themselves the guilty party. Officer Travis Arceneaux exemplifies this trope: He is ultimately revealed as the town’s serial killer.
Crime fiction has a long history within the western literary landscape, and examples of it abound within works of both contemporary and classic writing. Victorian author Wilkie Collins is often cited as an early author of canonical crime fiction. Although a prolific writer, he is best known for the novels The Moonstone and The Woman in White. The Moonstone is often cited as the first crime novel: It features a suspenseful plot, a central mystery, and a detective protagonist. Its action centers around the theft of a priceless diamond of important religious significance and the investigation into the complex plot to steal it. The Woman in White also features an investigator-protagonist and a suspenseful story and additionally demonstrates the author’s interest in complex psychology and fraught family dynamics. It examines mental illness and 19th-century gender roles and uses eerie settings to create an atmosphere of distress and anxiety. Key figures from 20th-century crime writing include Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Raymond Chandler is famous for his Philip Marlowe series. Marlowe is a “hardboiled” detective in Los Angeles whose investigative prowess is unparalleled, but who struggles in his personal life. The Big Sleep, the first novel in this series, was also turned into a successful film starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Notably, its screenplay was written by American author William Faulkner, who wrote for Hollywood in addition to working as a novelist. Dashiell Hammett is especially known for his crime novel The Maltese Falcon, which features the troubled detective Sam Spade. The plot focuses on Spade’s attempt to discover the truth about his partner’s murder and uncover its connection to a mysterious falcon statuette.
Among crime fiction’s notable contemporary female authors, Tana French stands out for her Dublin Detective Series, a set of six novels that follow various investigations amongst a rotating cast of detectives on the Dublin Police force. Like Jennifer Moorhead, Tana French places great importance on setting. While Moorhead writes about the swampy, rural world of Louisiana bayous where she grew up, French crafts novels in which Ireland and Irish history play important roles. She uses her works to ask broader questions about guilt and innocence, but also to explore Ireland’s complex history of involvement with the Catholic church and fraught gender roles. Like Moorhead, she also adds to a genre that was for many years peopled by male characters, creating female protagonists who are multi-faceted, complex, and not without their own emotional baggage and psychological issues.
