The Likeness

 

The Likeness by Tana French

Dublin Murder Squad, #2

Mystery

2008

Finished on 3/18/2026

Rating: 4.5/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

The haunting follow-up to Tana French's bestselling, Edgar Award-winning debut, In the Woods.

Six months after the events of In the Woods, Detective Cassie Maddox is still recovering. Transferred out of Dublin's Murder squad at her own request, she vows never to return. That is, until her boyfriend, Detective Sam O'Neill, calls her one beautiful spring morning, urgently asking her to come to a murder scene in the small town of Glenskehy.

It isn't until Cassie sees the body that she understands Sam's insistence. The dead girl is Cassie's double, and she carries ID identifying her as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie herself used years ago when she worked undercover. The question becomes not only who killed this girl, but who was this girl.

Frank Mackey, Cassie's former undercover boss, sees the opportunity of a lifetime. Having played Lexie Madison once before, Cassie is in the perfect position to take her place. The police will tell the media and Lexie's four housemates that the stab wound wasn't fatal. And Cassie will go on living Lexie's life until the killer is lured out to finish off the job.

It's a brilliant idea, until Cassie finds herself more emotionally involved in Lexie's life than she anticipated. Sharing the charming ramshackle old Whitehorn House with Lexie's strange, tight-knit group of university friends, Cassie is slowly seduced by the victim's way of life, by the thought of working on a murder investigation again, and by the mystery of the victim herself. 

As Cassie nears the truth about what has happened to Lexie Madison and who she really was, the lines between professional and personal, work and play, reality and fantasy become desperately tangled, and Cassie moves closer to losing herself forever.

In the Woods introduced readers to Tana French's brilliance and subtle craftsmanship. But it is The Likeness that firmly establishes her as an important voice in suspense fiction, a voice that will attract new readers as well as satisfy the large audience she garnered for her first bestselling novel.

It's been 17 years since I read The Likeness. Having recently re-read In the Woods, I was eager to give this second installment in Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series a second reading. Tina (Turn the Page blog) and I decided to make this a buddy read, but I'm afraid I didn't play by the established rules (reading 50 pages at a time) and read well ahead, finishing much more quickly than anticipated. Tana French has a way of pulling me in and keeping me reading way past my bedtime! 

With that said, this mystery took a bit longer to get engrossed than In the Woods. That could be due to the fact that I knew the basic premise of the plot and was eager to get to the part in which Cassie moved into Whitehorn House. With so many years between reads, I wasn't nearly as concerned about Cassie's roommates figuring out that she wasn't Lexie. I knew that would come toward the end of the book, but I wasn't on the edge of my seat, worrying that she would say or do something to raise suspicions. 

One of the things about reading a book a second time is knowing enough about the plot that you can relax and pay more attention to the writing and the more minute details rather than zipping along at break neck speed to find out how it's all going to end. And yet I was still surprised, as the finale grew closer, that there was so much that I'd forgotten.

I'll leave you with my initial review from 2009 here:

Wow! What an amazing book! I was immediately drawn in at the first chapter and never once grew tired or bored with the plot or characters. This is one of the most engrossing, entertaining, and enjoyable books I've read in years. I read for hours on end after work. I read late in the night. I read before work and, yes, even at stoplights. I could not put this book down! Nearly 500 pages and French never once missed a beat. The pacing is remarkably even, the breathtaking suspense incredibly sustained. Perhaps, like Cassie, I began to feel a part of the cozy group of friends, anxiously awaiting a revelation about Lexie's murder. As the details were finally revealed in the closing chapters, I found myself holding my breath with anticipation, laughing out loud, not because the situation was funny, but because of nervous tension.

Reminiscent of Dennis Lehane's literary mysteries, The Likeness is much more than a whodunit. The characters are finely drawn, springing to life with believable dialogue. The odd lifestyle of these eccentric roommates isn't the only aspect of the novel that creates such taut suspense. Whitethorn House (a creepy rambling mansion in which the five English post-grads reside) and the surrounding countryside are very much characters in and of themselves.

Cassie, on her return to undercover:

It felt good, getting stuck into the case like this, like I was just a Murder detective again and she was just another victim; it spread through me strong and sweet and soothing as hot whiskey after a long day in wind and rain. Frank was sprawled casually in his chair, but I could feel him watching me, and I knew I was starting to sound too interested. I shrugged, leaned my head back against the wall and gazed up at the ceiling.

and

Going to sleep on your first night undercover is something you never forget. All day you've been pure concentrated control, watching yourself as sharply and ruthlessly as you watch everyone and everything around you; but come night, alone on a strange mattress in a room where the air smells different, you've got no choice but to open your hands and let go, fall into sleep and into someone else's life like a pebble falling through cool green water. Even your first time, you know that in that second something irreversible will start happening, that in the morning you'll wake up changed. I needed to go into that bare, with nothing from my own life on my body, the way woodcutters' children in fairy tales have to leave their protections behind to enter the enchanted castle; the way votaries in old religions used to go naked to their initiation rites.

I held my breath, worried that Cassie would eventually make a slight mistake in her character, blowing her cover and putting herself in danger.

This is the part I didn't tell Sam: bad stuff happens to undercovers. A few of them get killed. Most lose friends, marriages, relationships. A couple turn feral, cross over to the other side so gradually that they never see it happening till it's too late, and end up with discreet, complicated early-retirement plans. Some, and never the ones you'd think, lose their nerve—no warning, they just wake up one morning and all at once it hits them what they're doing, and they freeze like tightrope walkers who've looked down[...]And some go the other way, the most lethal way of all: when the pressure gets to be too much, it's not their nerve that breaks, it's their fear. They lose the capacity to be afraid, even when they should be. These can't ever go home again. They're like those First World War airmen, the finest ones, shining in their recklessness and invincible, who got home and found that home had no place for what they were. Some people are are undercovers all the way to the bone; the job has taken them whole.

I was never afraid of getting killed and I was never afraid of losing my nerve. My kind of courage holds up best under fire; it's different dangers, more refined and insidious ones, that shake me. But the other things: I worried about those. Frank told me once—and I don't know whether he's right or not, and I didn't tell Sam this either—that all the best undercovers have a dark thread woven into them, somewhere.

My husband enjoyed the book, yet felt the mystery fell short due to the unbelievable set of coincidences. And I suppose he's right, to some extent. After all, what are the odds that one's doppelganger just happens to be a police detective? I, on the other hand, was able to suspend disbelief and was thoroughly entertained. My copy of the book is littered with Post-It notes, marking passages I thought might reveal a hidden clue as I flipped back and forth, trying to untangle the intricate threads of a skillfully crafted web.

This is one of those compelling mysteries I continually found myself imagining on the big screen. The Talented Mr. Ripley, which also involves a complicated masquerade, lurked in my consciousness as I read. I can even envision Jude Law and Matt Damon playing Daniel and Justin. And, perhaps, Audrey Tautou as Cassie.

While The Likeness is a follow-up to In the Woods, I believe they stand alone and can be read in any order. It's early in the year, but as of today, The Likeness is my #1 read in 2009. And from what I've read, French is working on a third, this time narrated by Cassie's boss, Frank Mackey. Until then, I plan to pick up Donna Tartt's The Secret History, which has been compared to The Likeness. I'm ready for another gothic mystery!

Five stars, Tana!

Me again (in 2026). 

This wasn't the perfect 5-star read this second time around. I blame it on knowing how it would all turn out in the end. Kind of like knowing how The Sixth Sense or Shutter Island ends. But all in all, a very good read. 

Highly recommend!