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!

In the Woods (Re-Read)

 

In the Woods by Tana French

Dublin Murder Squad, #1

Mystery

2007

Finished on 2/22/2026

Rating: 4.75/5 (Excellent!)

Publisher's Blurb:

As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.

Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.

I first discovered Tana French in 2009 when I read her debut mystery, In the Woods, with my book group. Actually, I think I read the ARC first and recommended it to my book group a few months later. I loved the book and went on to read many more in French's Dublin Murder Squad series. A few months ago, I started thinking about re-reading The Likeness (the second in the series), but decided to start with In the Woods, as the main characters overlap in each installment. For some reason, I thought I remembered that the beginning of this mystery was somewhat slow, but with this second reading, I was quickly drawn into the story, unable to put it down even as I grew sleepy each night. I'd forgotten so many details that it felt like I was reading it for the first time. I loved it just as much as that first reading and can't wait to re-read The Likeness!

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

In the Woods may only be the second book I've read this year, but I already know it's going to wind up on my Top Ten list for 2009! What an amazing debut by Tana French. Complex, flawed, yet highly likeable characters, combined with exceptionally rich details and language, draw the reader into this breathless psychological thriller. I found myself marking page after page, sorting through clues, eager to solve the mystery before Ryan & Maddox. And, now that I've finished the story, I find my thoughts drifting back to various scenes, missing the duo, who at times reminded me of Dennis Lehane's Kenzie & Gennaro. I do believe Cassie is my new literary girl crush. She's intelligent, determined and very tough; much like Smokey (Cody McFadyen's main character), Sunny (Robert Parker's heroine) and Clarice (The Silence of the Lambs). Definitely not a goofy klutz like Stephanie Plum!

French's main characters aren't the only aspect of this procedural mystery that bring to mind Dennis Lehane's mysteries. French's writing has a similar literary quality to that of Lehane's. Passages such as the following make this much more than your typical brain-candy mystery:

Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in small-town 1950s. This is none of Ireland's subtle seasons mixed for a connoisseur's palate, watercolor nuances within a pinch-sized range of cloud and soft rain; this is summer full-throated and extravagant in a hot pure silkscreen blue. This summer explodes on your tongue tasting of chewed blades of long grass, your own clean sweat, Marie biscuits with butter squirting through the holes and shaken bottles of red lemonade picnicked in tree houses. It tingles on your skin with BMX wind in your face, ladybug feet up your arm; it packs every breath full of mown grass and billowing wash lines; it chimes and fountains with birdcalls, bees, leaves and football-bounces and skipping chants, One! two! three! This summer will never end. It starts every day with a shower of Mr. Whippy notes and your best friend's knock at the door, finishes it with long slow twilight and mothers silhouetted in doorways calling you to come in, through the bats shrilling among the black lace trees. This is Everysummer decked in all its best glory.

On the joy of finding one's true calling in life:

Out of absolutely nowhere I felt a sudden sweet shot of joy, piercing and distilled as the jolt I imagine heroin users get when the fix hits the vein. It was my partner bracing herself on her hands as she slid fluidly off the desk, it was the neat practiced movement of flipping my notebook shut one-handed, it was my superintendent wriggling into his suit jacket and covertly checking his shoulders for dandruff, it was the garishly lit office with a stack of marker-labeled case files sagging in the corner and evening rubbing up against the window. It was the realization, all over again, that this was real and it was my life. Maybe Katy Devlin, if she had made it that far, would have felt this way about the blisters on her toes, the pungent smell of sweat and floor wax in the dance studio, the early-morning breakfast bells raced down echoing corridors. Maybe she, like me, would have loved the tiny details and the inconveniences even more dearly than the wonders, because they are the things that prove you belong.

I love the cadence of that passage.

Just as the narrative began to lag ever so slightly, a new discovery was revealed and the intensity rushed back. It was at this point that I knew the book was going to be a winner. I found every opportunity to pick up the novel, neglecting household obligations and chores. I was unable to stop myself from reading late into the night. I was eager to discuss specific details of the narrative with several of my coworkers, not waiting patiently for our book group to meet. I told my husband, repeatedly, what a great book I was reading. I made a mental note to set a Favorite Mysteries endcap in March, leading, of course, with In the Woods. I composed a fan letter in my head to Tana French. And, as I poured myself a bourbon after a long, exhausting day, my thoughts returned to Rob, Cassie and Sam, remembering their evening ritual of dinner and drinks while discussing the case.

Oh, this would make such a fabulous movie!

I do have one minor quibble which involves the initial conversation with the family when the detectives inform them of Katy's death. The parents and older sister all referred to Katy in the past tense, jarring me from my engrossed state of literary bliss. I don't think anyone would argue that most people who have lost a loved one spend days, if not weeks and months, referring to that person in the present tense. While French may not know this from personal experience, it is a detail that should have been caught by her editor. (Although for French to have made too much of that issue would have been a cliche, of course.)

I don't remember when I first heard about In the Woods, but more than likely it was either Stephanie or Iliana's reviews that caught my attention. It wound up a winner with my book group this month and we're all anxious to read French's follow-up thriller, The Likeness, in which several characters from In the Woods return. From what I've heard, this sophomore work is even better than French's debut. If that's the case, I may have discovered my first 5/5 read for 2009. In the Woods is a gripping story of loss and survival, friendship and secrets. While some of the details in the plot were left dangling, I was thoroughly entertained and completely engaged, and I look forward to many more books by Tana French.

The Secret Place

The Secret Place by Tana French
Mystery
Dublin Murder Squad Mysteries
2014 Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Read by Stephen Hogan and Lara Hutchinson
Finished on January 22, 2016
Rating: 2/5 (Fair)

Publisher's Blurb:

The photo on the card shows a boy who was found murdered, a year ago, on the grounds of a girls’ boarding school in the leafy suburbs of Dublin. The caption says I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.

Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to get a foot in the door of Dublin’s Murder Squad—and one morning, sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey brings him this photo. “The Secret Place,” a board where the girls at St. Kilda’s School can pin up their secrets anonymously, is normally a mishmash of gossip and covert cruelty, but today someone has used it to reignite the stalled investigation into the murder of handsome, popular Chris Harper. Stephen joins forces with the abrasive Detective Antoinette Conway to find out who and why.

But everything they discover leads them back to Holly’s close-knit group of friends and their fierce enemies, a rival clique—and to the tangled web of relationships that bound all the girls to Chris Harper. Every step in their direction turns up the pressure. Antoinette Conway is already suspicious of Stephen’s links to the Mackey family. St. Kilda’s will go a long way to keep murder outside their walls. Holly’s father, Detective Frank Mackey, is circling, ready to pounce if any of the new evidence points toward his daughter. And the private underworld of teenage girls can be more mysterious and more dangerous than either of the detectives imagined.

The Secret Place is a powerful, haunting exploration of friendship and loyalty, and a gripping addition to the Dublin Murder Squad series.

I'm a big fan of Tana French's mysteries, having read everything she's published, starting with her first, In the Woods, which my book club read back in 2009. With each new book, I grew more and more fond of French's style and characters, looking forward to each new group of detectives. Typically, the new lead detective has had a minor role in the previous book, so it's fun to get to know more about them in the latest installment of the Dublin Murder Squad series.

My favorite book of French's is constantly changing with each new release; the latest always just a little bit better than the previous book. So why wasn't I chomping at the bit to read The Secret Place when it was released in 2014? Waiting to read some reviews from fellow bloggers, and not really hearing any positive remarks from friends and co-workers, I held off until early this year. I started with the audio and couldn't get interested, eventually calling it quits. After a few weeks, I decided to give it another chance and picked up the print edition. I finished, in spite of my overall dissatisfaction. There were too many unanswered questions about the supernatural aspect of the mystery (an on-going theme in all of French's books) and I didn't like either of the detectives or any of the eight girls. Also, the alternating time periods were confusing and didn't flow well, especially when listening to the audio book.

Final Thoughts:

Bleh. Definitely my least favorite of all of Tana French's books. 

Broken Harbor

Broken Harbor by Tana French
Dublin Murder Squad Series #4
2012 Penguin Group
Mystery
Finished on 3/7/13
Rating: 4.75/5 (Terrific!)



 
From the Author’s Website:

Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy, the brash cop from Tana French’s bestselling Faithful Place, plays by the book and plays hard. That’s what’s made him the Murder squad’s top detective—and that’s what puts the biggest case of the year into his hands.

On one of the half-built, half-abandoned “luxury” developments that litter Ireland, Patrick Spain and his two young children are dead. His wife, Jenny, is in intensive care.

At first, Scorcher and his rookie partner, Richie, think it’s going to be an easy solve. But too many small things can’t be explained. The half dozen baby monitors, their cameras pointing at holes smashed in the Spains’ walls. The files erased from the Spains’ computer. The story Jenny told her sister about a shadowy intruder who was slipping past all the locks.

And Broken Harbor holds memories for Scorcher. Seeing the case on the news sends his sister Dina off the rails again, and she’s resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family one summer at Broken Harbor, back when they were children.


I don’t know why I waited so long to read this latest mystery by French. She’s become one of my favorite mystery writers, if not my favorite author altogether. With each and every new installment to the Dublin Murder Squad Series, I become a more fervent fan, recommending the books to friends, co-workers, and customers with great enthusiasm. Perhaps I was subconsciously holding off on reading the novel since I knew as soon as I was finished, I would have a long wait before I’d have the chance to read another. As it was, I slowed my pace as I read Broken Harbor, trying to stretch out the experience as long as possible, savoring each and every page, all the while very anxious to unravel the clues, eager to solve the mystery before it was revealed. Isn’t that how it goes? Don’t we mystery-lovers try to beat the detectives at their own game? Or is that just my competitive streak coming out? ;)

In addition to the psychological puzzle, I enjoyed French’s thought-provoking prose:

I hit the M1 and opened up wide, letting the Beemer do her thing. Richie glanced at the speedometer, but I knew without looking that I was bang on the limit, not a single mile over, and he kept his mouth shut. Probably he was thinking what a boring bollix I was. Plenty of people think the same thing. All of them are teenagers, mentally if not physically. Only teenagers think boring is bad. Adults, grown men and women who’ve been around the block a few times, know that boring is a gift straight from God. Life has more than enough excitement up its sleeve, ready to hit you with as soon as you’re not looking, without you adding to the drama. If Richie didn’t know that already, he was about to find out.

and

Fiona looked around wildly, like the room would vanish any second and she would wake up. It was bare concrete and sloppy mortar, with a couple of wooden beams propped against one wall like they were holding it up. A stack of fake-oak banisters covered in a thick coating of grime, flattened Styrofoam cups on the floor, a muddy blue sweatshirt balled up in one corner: it looked like an archaeological site frozen in the moment when the inhabitants had dropped everything and fled, from some natural disaster or some invading force. Fiona couldn’t see the place now, but it was going to be stamped on her mind for the rest of her life. This is one of the little extras murder throws at the families: long after you lose hold of the victim’s face or the last words she said to you, you remember every detail of the nightmare limbo where this thing came clawing into your life.

and

In every way there is, murder is chaos. Our job is simple, when you get down to it: we stand against that, for order.

I remember this country back when I was growing up. We went to church, we ate family suppers around the table, and it would never even have crossed a kid’s mind to tell an adult to fuck off. There was plenty of bad there, I don’t forget that, but we all knew exactly where we stood and we didn’t break the rules lightly. If that sounds like small stuff to you, if it sounds boring or old-fashioned or uncool, think about this: people smiled at strangers, people said hello to neighbors, people left their doors unlocked and helped old women with their shopping bags, and the murder rate was scraping zero.

Sometime since then, we started turning feral. Wild got into the air like a virus, and it’s spreading. Watch the packs of kids roaming inner-city estates, mindless and brakeless as baboons, looking for something or someone to wreck. Watch the businessmen shoving past pregnant women for a seat on the train, using their 4x4s to force smaller cars out of their way, purple-faced and outraged when the world dares to contradict them. Watch the teenagers throw screaming stamping tantrums when, for once, they can’t have it the second they want it. Everything that stops us being animals is eroding, washing away like sand, going and gone.

The final step into feral is murder. We stand between that and you. We say, when no one else will, There are rules here. There are limits. There are boundaries that don’t move.

I’m the least fanciful guy around, but on nights when I wonder whether there was any point to my day, I think about this: the first thing we ever did, when we started turning into humans, was draw a line across the cave door and say: Wild stays out. What I do is what the first men did. They built walls to keep back the sea. They fought the wolves for the hearth fire.

Final Thoughts: Another excellent page-turner by an accomplished writer! It would be difficult to choose a favorite in this series, simply because I’ve enjoyed all of them. The characters are authentic and well-drawn, and I especially liked the chemistry between Scorcher and Richie in this latest installment. I wonder if Richie will be the lead detective in French’s next novel…

Faithful Place

Faithful Place by Tana French
Mystery
2010 Viking
Finished on 4/2/10
Rating: 5/5 (Outstanding!)
ARC - On sale July 13, 2010
FTC Disclosure: Received ARC from Kate Lloyd (Sr. Publicist, Viking/Penguin)



In all your life, only a few moments matter. Mostly you never get a good look at them except in hindsight, long after they've zipped past you: the moment when you decided whether to talk to that girl, slow down on that blind bend, stop and find that condom. I was lucky, I guess you could call it. I got to see one of mine face-to-face, and recognize it for what it was. I got to feel the riptide pull of my life spinning around me, one winter night, while I waited in the dark at the top of Faithful Place.

Publisher's Blurb

The hotly anticipated third novel of the Dublin Murder Squad from the New York Times bestselling author.

Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was nineteen, growing up poor in Dublin's inner city and living crammed into a small flat with his family on Faithful Place. But he had his sights set on a lot more. He and Rosie Daly were all ready to run away to London together, get married, get good jobs, break away from factory work and poverty and their old lives.

But on the winter night when they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn't show. Frank took it for granted that she'd dumped him—probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again.

Neither did Rosie. Everyone thought she had gone to England on her own and was over there living a shiny new life. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie's suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not.

Getting sucked in is a lot easier than getting out again. Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in case loyalty to his family and community make him a liability. Faithful Place wants him out because he's a detective now, and the Place has never liked cops. Frank just wants to find out what happened to Rosie Daly—and he's willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get the job done.

Whooweee! I really enjoyed In the Woods. And I loved The Likeness. But, Faithful Place gets top honors as my all-time favorite of Tana French's mysteries. While the previous two are also set in Dublin, I felt they could have taken place pretty much anywhere. However, with Faithful Place, French takes her readers deep into the grittiness of Dublin's tenement neighborhoods. The dialogue and characters are rich and authentic, reminding me a little bit of Frank McCourt's childhood in Angela's Ashes. The pacing is even and taut, holding my attention late into the night. I could have easily devoured this book in a few short days, but I wanted to make it last as long as possible, so I stretched it out to almost two full weeks. As soon as I finished, I wanted to start all over again. But other ARCs were vying for my attention, so I'll save it for another time. I am tempted to go back and re-read The Likeness, just to re-visit Frank's character from this new perspective. Maybe I'll listen to all three on audio, as I await French's fourth installment. There will be another, right?!

I loved Frank's colorfully idiomatic language and slang: "arse," "eejit," "Fair play to you," "No one gives a toss," "Jaysus," "You're grand," "Ah, cop on, will you[...]she'll be mad into some girl band," and "feckin." It was great to hear authentic Dublin in every sentence.

I love how Frank cares so much about his daughter and the crazy world she's growing up in:

"This is not trivial shit, Jackie. I want Holly to be aware that there is a difference between truth and meaningless gibberish bullshit. She's completely surrounded, from every angle, by people telling her that reality is one hundred percent subjective: if you really believe you're a star then you deserve a record contract whether or not you can sing for shit, and if you really believe in weapons of mass destruction then it doesn't actually matter whether they exist or not, and fame is the be-all and end-all because you don't exist unless enough people are paying attention to you. I want my daughter to learn that not everything in this world is determined by how often she hears it or how much she wants it to be true or how many other people are looking. Somewhere in there, for a thing to count as real, there has got to be some actual bloody reality. God knows she's not going to learn that anywhere else. So I'm going to have to teach her all by myself. If she occasionally gets a little stroppy along the way, so be it."

Frank on the Murder Squad:

For the first time in my career, I was getting an inkling of why Murder love their job the way they do. When undercovers go hunting, we'll take anything that wanders into our snares; half the skill is knowing what to use as bait, what to toss back where it came from and what to knock on the head and bring home. This was a whole different thing. These boys were the specialists called in to track down a rogue predator, and they focused on him like they were focusing on a lover. Anything else that wandered into their sights, while they were trawling the dark for that one shape, meant sweet fuck-all. This was specific and it was intimate, and it was powerful stuff: me and that one man, somewhere out there, listening hard for each other to put a foot wrong. That evening in the Very Sad Cafe, it felt like the most intimate connection I had.

Frank on his Rosie:

The lights had changed to a deep underwater haze and behind me a girl started singing, low and throaty and strong. In the slow spinning beams of green and gold Rosie looked like a mermaid, like a mirage made out of color and light; for a second I wanted to grab her and crush her right against me, before she could vanish between my hands. She took my breath away. We were still at the age when girls are years older than guys, and the guys grow up by doing their best when the girls need them to. I had known since I was a tiny kid that I wanted something more than what the teachers told us we were meant for, factories and dole queues, but it had never hit me that I might actually be able to go out and build that something more with my own hands. I had known for years that my family was fucked up beyond repair, and that every time I gritted my teeth and walked into that flat another little piece of my mind got strafed to rubble; but it had never once occurred to me, no matter how deep the crazy piled up, that I could walk away. I only saw it when Rosie needed me to catch up with her.

Final thoughts: This is such a great story! French is a marvelous storyteller and is well-deserving of the numerous awards bestowed upon her for In the Woods (the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and the Barry awards for Best First Novel). I was completely transported, right along with Frank Mackey, to Dublin's Faithful Place. It's been over two months since I closed the book, but French's memorable characters remain just as vivid as the day I met them. Kudos, Ms. French. You're three for three!

The Likeness

The Likeness by Tana French
Mystery
2008 Viking
Finished on 2/27/09
Rating: 5/5 (Outstanding!)




Product Description

The eagerly anticipated follow-up to the New York Times bestselling psychological thriller In the Woods

Six months after the events of In the Woods, Detective Cassie Maddox is still trying to recover. She’s transferred out of the murder squad and started a relationship with Detective Sam O’Neill, but she’s too badly shaken to make a commitment to him or to her career. Then Sam calls her to the scene of his new case: a young woman found stabbed to death in a small town outside Dublin. The dead girl’s ID says her name is Lexie Madison—the identity Cassie used years ago as an undercover detective—and she looks exactly like Cassie.

With no leads, no suspects, and no clue to Lexie’s real identity, Cassie’s old undercover boss, Frank Mackey, spots the opportunity of a lifetime. They can say that the stab wound wasn’t fatal and send Cassie undercover in her place to find out information that the police never would and to tempt the killer out of hiding. At first Cassie thinks the idea is crazy, but she is seduced by the prospect of working on a murder investigation again and by the idea of assuming the victim’s identity as a graduate student with a cozy group of friends.

As she is drawn into Lexie’s world, Cassie realizes that the girl’s secrets run deeper than anyone imagined. Her friends are becoming suspicious, Sam has discovered a generations-old feud involving the old house the students live in, and Frank is starting to suspect that Cassie’s growing emotional involvement could put the whole investigation at risk. Another gripping psychological thriller featuring the headstrong protagonist we’ve come to love, from an author who has proven that she can deliver.

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!

In the Woods

In the Woods by Tana French
Mystery
2007 Penguin Books
Finished on 1/16/09
Rating: 4.75/5 (Excellent!)
Winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel




Product Description:

The debut novel of an astonishing new voice in psychological suspense.

In Tana French's powerful debut thriller, three children leave their small Dublin neighborhood to play in the surrounding woods. Hours later, their mothers' calls go unanswered. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children, gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.

Twenty years later, Detective Rob Ryan—the found boy, who has kept his past a secret—and his partner Cassie Maddox investigate the murder of a twelve-year-old girl in the same woods. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him, and that of his own shadowy past.

In the Woods may only be the second book I've read this year, but I already know it's going to wind up on my Top Ten list for 2009! What an amazing debut by Tana French. Complex, flawed, yet highly likeable characters, combined with exceptionally rich details and language, draw the reader into this breathless psychological thriller. I found myself marking page after page, sorting through clues, eager to solve the mystery before Ryan & Maddox. And, now that I've finished the story, I find my thoughts drifting back to various scenes, missing the duo, who at times reminded me of Dennis Lehane's Kenzie & Gennaro. I do believe Cassie is my new literary girl crush. She's intelligent, determined and very tough; much like Smokey (Cody McFadyen's main character), Sunny (Robert Parker's heroine) and Clarice (The Silence of the Lambs). Definitely not a goofy klutz like Stephanie Plum!

French's main characters aren't the only aspect of this procedural mystery that bring to mind Dennis Lehane's mysteries. French's writing has a similar literary quality to that of Lehane's. Passages such as the following make this much more than your typical brain-candy mystery:

Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in small-town 1950s. This is none of Ireland's subtle seasons mixed for a connoisseur's palate, watercolor nuances within a pinch-sized range of cloud and soft rain; this is summer full-throated and extravagant in a hot pure silkscreen blue. This summer explodes on your tongue tasting of chewed blades of long grass, your own clean sweat, Marie biscuits with butter squirting through the holes and shaken bottles of red lemonade picnicked in tree houses. It tingles on your skin with BMX wind in your face, ladybug feet up your arm; it packs every breath full of mown grass and billowing wash lines; it chimes and fountains with birdcalls, bees, leaves and football-bounces and skipping chants, One! two! three! This summer will never end. It starts every day with a shower of Mr. Whippy notes and your best friend's knock at the door, finishes it with long slow twilight and mothers silhouetted in doorways calling you to come in, through the bats shrilling among the black lace trees. This is Everysummer decked in all its best glory.

On the joy of finding one's true calling in life:

Out of absolutely nowhere I felt a sudden sweet shot of joy, piercing and distilled as the jolt I imagine heroin users get when the fix hits the vein. It was my partner bracing herself on her hands as she slid fluidly off the desk, it was the neat practiced movement of flipping my notebook shut one-handed, it was my superintendent wriggling into his suit jacket and covertly checking his shoulders for dandruff, it was the garishly lit office with a stack of marker-labeled case files sagging in the corner and evening rubbing up against the window. It was the realization, all over again, that this was real and it was my life. Maybe Katy Devlin, if she had made it that far, would have felt this way about the blisters on her toes, the pungent smell of sweat and floor wax in the dance studio, the early-morning breakfast bells raced down echoing corridors. Maybe she, like me, would have loved the tiny details and the inconveniences even more dearly than the wonders, because they are the things that prove you belong.

I love the cadence of that passage!

Just as the narrative began to lag ever so slightly, a new discovery was revealed and the intensity rushed back. It was at this point that I knew the book was going to be a winner. I found every opportunity to pick up the novel, neglecting household obligations and chores. I was unable to stop myself from reading late into the night. I was eager to discuss specific details of the narrative with several of my coworkers, not waiting patiently for our book group to meet. I told my husband, repeatedly, what a great book I was reading. I made a mental note to set a Favorite Mysteries endcap in March, leading, of course, with In the Woods. I composed a fan letter in my head to Tana French. And, as I poured myself a bourbon after a long, exhausting day, my thoughts returned to Rob, Cassie and Sam, remembering their evening ritual of dinner and drinks while discussing the case.

Oh, this would make such a fabulous movie!

I do have one minor quibble which involves the initial conversation with the family when the detectives inform them of Katy's death. The parents and older sister all referred to Katy in the past tense, jarring me from my engrossed state of literary bliss. I don't think anyone would argue that most people who have lost a loved one spend days, if not weeks and months, referring to that person in the present tense. While French may not know this from personal experience, it is a detail that should have been caught by her editor. (Although for French to have made too much of that issue would have been a cliche, of course.)

I don't remember when I first heard about In the Woods, but more than likely it was either Stephanie or Iliana's reviews that caught my attention. It wound up a winner with my book group this month and we're all anxious to read French's follow-up thriller, The Likeness, in which several characters from In the Woods return. From what I've heard, this sophomore work is even better than French's debut. If that's the case, I may have discovered my first 5/5 read for 2009. In the Woods is a gripping story of loss and survival, friendship and secrets. While some of the details in the plot were left dangling, I was thoroughly entertained and completely engaged, and I look forward to many more books by Tana French.