Tag Archives: Tana French

Faithful Place by Tana French

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Synopsis:
When the body of his first love is discovered 22 years after she failed to show up and elope to England, undercover detective Frank Mackey is sucked back into his dysfunctional and dangerous family.

Review:
Faithful Place is yet another perfect read from Tana French. As Frank navigates the crime scene, even after being ordered to stay away from the case, his grief, nostalgia, and brokenness threaten to consume him. Nobody does bittersweet regret like Tana French. My heart ached for all these poor lost characters, whose dreams were all thwarted by the accident of birth and the ties of family.

I did guess the murderer’s identity pretty early on, but I think that was the point, to place us completely in Frank’s point of view. He missed it, even if I didn’t, and that says volumes about who he is. A romantic to the end, when he says that he and Rosie Daly lost the chance to be the happiest two people on earth, you believe him utterly.

I also have to give props to Tana French for her exquisitely musical dialogue. Her use of slang, profanity, and imagery perfectly limns the subtle class distinctions between her characters, which is another huge part of the story.

The Likeness by Tana French

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Synopsis:
When a detective goes undercover to impersonate a murder victim sharing her face, she finds the family she’s always dreamed of and risks blowing everything.

Review:
I was a big fan of Tana French’s In the Woods, so I leapt at the chance to read The Likeness, her followup featuring several of the same characters.

Former detective Cassie Maddox is stuck in Domestic Violence after being forced off the Murder squad due to her role in the catastrophe outlined within In the Woods. A routine murder investigation turns very, very weird when it turns out that the victim, Lexie Madison, looks exactly like Cassie, and is using an identity created by Cassie back when she was working as an undercover agent. Her former boss in the undercover unit decides to send Cassie back to the home she shared with four housemates and see if she can ferret out the murderer by pretending to be Lexie.

The roommates, who think that Lexie was in a coma, are Bright Young Things, living a hermetically sealed, intellectually and aesthetically stimulating life inside Daniel’s family’s estate home. They’re the kind of glittering coterie that has appeared in books like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Danny Boyle’s excellent film Shallow Grave. Cassie is instantly seduced–both by the closeness she finds among the housemates, and by Lexie herself, whose bright exterior masked a rabbit’s warren of dark secrets.

The Likeness was a riveting read. I found myself stealing every available minute for it–dishes piling up, bathroom growing fuzzier by the minute, with Superfast Toddler mercifully cooperating by giving me some very long naps. I was as much in suspense over Cassie’s impending breakdown as I was with the identity of the murderer. French previously limned Cassie’s friendship with former partner Rob in such heartrending detail that I felt like their chaos was happening to me. Here, she builds a web of friendship that conjures up what my friend Megan calls pre-nostalgia–where you anticipate feeling nostalgic while something is unfolding, where the ache is part of the pleasure. More than just bittersweet, pre-nostalgia is self-inflicted yet inevitable. Just like Lexie’s death.

Oh, and The Likeness features an outstandingly poignant last paragraph that will mean nothing unless you read the whole book first. Don’t spoil it for yourself!

In the Woods by Tana French

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Synopsis:
A murder investigation cuts too close to the bone for a detective who was once part of a missing persons case himself.

Review:

The other Sunday, Superfast Husband had to go to Home Depot after church, and since Superfast Toddler would certainly fall asleep in the car, I needed a book to read while listening to her dulcet snores. We stopped into the murder mystery bookshop nearby, where I asked if they could request anyone who loves Barbara Vine, and likes Ruth Rendell but not as much. Something character-based, with a lot of psychology and not too heavy on the forensics. Another customer snatched In the Woods off the shelf and the premise immediately intrigued me.

When Rob Ryan was a boy, he went by the name Adam and lost his two best friends in a missing persons case that was presumed but not proved to be murder. Rob was found with his shoes full of blood and no memory of what happened in the woods. Now, he is a detective on the murder squad and no one but his partner Cassie knows that he was once Adam. When a body is discovered in the very same woods, Rob and Cassie leap at the case, with Rob swearing up and down that his role won’t be compromised by his personal history. At least, until a possible connection emerges.

Tana French is a first-rate writer, crafting gorgeous sentences and exhibiting total mastery over her storytelling. I would rank her more Rendell than Vine, but Rendell at her finest, which is a pretty fine thing. The case itself was fairly workmanlike, once the solution was revealed, but French’s acute perceptions into the pettiness of human nature made for a fascinating read. She develops a complex and emotionally charged relationship between Cassie and Rob, the outcome of which offers just as much suspense as the whodunit angle.

The story is told by Rob in the first person, and while he’s not a standard unreliable narrator, he is fond of explaining himself in a way that both seduces and highlights the flaws in his own self-examination. I was swept away by the voice French created for Rob. He’s a figure both tragic and complicit, and my heart ached for him on every page.