book review
Title: Faithful Place
Author: Tana French
# of Pages: 400
Summary (from amazon.com): French's emotionally searing third novel of the Dublin murder squad (after The Likeness) shows the Irish author getting better with each book. In 1985, 19-yearold Frank Mackey and his girlfriend, Rosie Daly, made secret plans to elope to England and start a new life together far away from their families, particularly the hard-drinking Mackeys. But when Rosie doesn't meet Frank the night they're meant to leave and he finds a note, Frank assumes she's left him behind. For 22 years, Frank, who becomes an undercover cop, stays away from Faithful Place, his childhood Dublin neighborhood. When his younger sister, Jackie, calls to tell him that someone found Rosie's suitcase hidden in an abandoned house, Frank reluctantly returns. Now everything he thought he knew is turned upside down: did Rosie really leave that night, or did someone stop her before she could? French, who briefly introduced Mackey in The Likeness, is adept at seamlessly blending suspenseful whodunit elements with Frank's familial demons.
Opinion: I've been a fan of French's writing since I read In the Woods and I've been keeping up with this Dublin-based series of detective novels ever since. Faithful Place was no less riveting or well-written as the two previous, but I don't know if I'm just getting better at detective stories or French's storytelling, but I called who the killer was almost immediately after he was introduced into the story. That's not to say that the twists and turns along the way in the hunt for Rosie's killer and the motive weren't compelling, but I guess what really brought the tension in the first two novels is that when you did find out who was the culprit, it was surprising and then you were able to go back and piece together the subtleties you didn't even recognize while reading. All in all, I thought this book was fun and exciting and I hope she continues to write about this one particular police squad.
Now Reading: Escape: The true story of the only Westerner ever to break out of Thailand's Bangkok Hilton by David McMillan
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