Breakers cover art

Breakers

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Breakers

By: Doug Johnstone
Narrated by: Angus King
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

A pulsatingly tense, deeply moving psychological thriller from the number one best-selling Scottish author of Fault Lines.

A toxic family...a fight for survival...

Seventeen-year-old Tyler lives in one of Edinburgh’s most deprived areas. Coerced into robbing rich people’s homes by his bullying older siblings, he’s also trying to care for his little sister and his drug-addict mum.

On a job, his brother Barry stabs a homeowner and leaves her for dead, but that’s just the beginning of their nightmare, because the woman is the wife of Edinburgh’s biggest crime lord, Deke Holt.

With the police and the Holts closing in, and his shattered family in devastating danger, Tyler meets posh girl Flick in another stranger’s house, and he thinks she may just be his salvation...unless he drags her down too.

A pulsatingly tense psychological thriller, Breakers is also a breathtakingly brutal, beautiful and deeply moving story of a good kid in the wrong family, from one of Scotland’s finest crime writers.

©2019 Doug Johnstone (P)2019 Audible, Ltd
City Life Coming of Age Crime Crime Fiction Crime Thrillers Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction International Mystery & Crime Literary Fiction Mystery Psychological Romance Romantic Suspense Suspense Thriller Thriller & Suspense Traditional Detectives Urban Scotland Detective

Listeners also enjoyed...

Hit and Run cover art
Gone Again cover art
A Long Time Dead cover art
Crash Land cover art
A Litter of Bones: A Scottish Crime Thriller cover art
The Bonnie Dead cover art
The Turning of Our Bones cover art
All the Hidden Truths cover art
Return to Evil cover art
Grimm Up North cover art
Starvation Lake cover art
The Hope That Kills cover art
The One That Got Away cover art
Detective Sebastian Clifford, Books 1-3 cover art
Northwind cover art
The King of Crows cover art

Critic reviews

"A cracking and highly original thriller. Johnstone never fails to deliver." (Mark Billingham)

"This may be Doug Johnstone’s best book yet. An unsparing yet sympathetic depiction of Edinburgh’s ignored underclass, with terrific characterisation. Tense, pacey, filmic." (Ian Rankin)

"Breakers again shows that Doug Johnstone is a noir heavyweight and a master of gritty realism. This may be his finest novel yet." (Willy Vlautin)

All stars
Most relevant
This was a fantastic listen Angus King brilliant as per usual. The book from the very offset had me engrossed crescendoing to an action packed finale all I can say is give it a go.

5 out of 5 across the board a really good listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Characters story and narration brilliant. I’m looking for another one by this author and as always, the narrator did a sterling job

Great story.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I enjoyed this book. If you can get over the bad language and use of the c word then you may enjoy it. It is very violent in parts but it is also very human and touching in other parts. A bit far fetched but it is a story. I was looking for something a bit different and this was certainly that. I have just purchased another by this author .

Different

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Stark story with violence, love and endurance intertwined, beautifully written and narrated with impeccable phrasing by Angus King.

Powerful and poignant

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Narration by Angus King was excellent (aside from an odd pronunciation of Wauchope). The story moved along well, and kept me listening, though there weren't many surprises. If there was one weak area, it was in the final showdown, which was apparently a shoot-out, in a quiet residential area, yet there is no mention of there having been any reports of gunshot made by neighbours.
I will look for more by Doug Johnstone. Was already a fan of Angus King.

Gritty well constructed story

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

See more reviews