After Tana French’s first novel, In the Woods, I was left breathless and absolutely committed to buying her sophomore effort. It’s not that I regret it, but it didn’t show the same care and craft. While still displaying some of her hallmark subtleties and qualities, it felt rushed, and lacked both in believability and polish. But she is still addictive, and there were a few late nights spent racing through this compelling tale.

Irish detective Cassie Maddox no longer investigates murders–her experiences in In The Woods caused her to switch departments to the definitely-less-awesome Domestic Violence unit–but a young woman is murdered in the countryside outside Dublin who is physically identical to her. Maddox gets sucked into on a risky but fascinating undercover operation in which she pretends to be the deceased, living with the victim’s four weird-but-extraordinary housemates in a ramshackle Georgian mansion. As an effectively eerie twist, the dead girl had been using an alias and character invented by Maddox and her erstwhile mentor, Frank, for an extended undercover drug investigation.

The elements that bugged me stick with me more than the good bits; I think I take for granted French’s general skill with writing and storytelling. I was annoyed that I couldn’t believe in the premise of someone being so identical to someone else. I was bothered that she could pull it off–fooling this girl’s closest friends. I was jarred by how hyperbolic Maddox’s reaction seemed to be to every minor epiphany. I was bored to nausea by her boyfriend, Sam O’Neill, another detective. I found the four housemates’ supposed profundity and closeness forced. They are always “beautiful” or “angelic.”

And yet I would read it again. It’s not a masterpiece, but it has a pull, like gravity.

LibraryThing Tags:  mystery, ireland, fiction, novel, crime, detective, tbr, fun, wanttoread

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