Since a friend gave me her copy of In the Woods (she doesn’t hold on to books after reading them and I
am forever grateful), I became a fan of Tana French. After that, as soon as her
books would go into print, The Likeness,
Faithful Place and Broken Harbor, I was at the front of the
line. Her latest release, The Secret
Place does not disappoint.
My one suggestion is, if this is your first
exposure to Tana French’s novels, don’t start here. The books all involve the
Dublin Murder Squad but each has a different central character from the squad.
In The Secret Place, the main
character, Detective Stephen Moran, is a minor one in a previous novel. French
uses this technique in all her books, introducing you to some of the characters
peripherally and then allowing you to enter the mind of those characters in another novel from
the outside in and vice-versa.
The plot focuses on the unsolved death of a teenage boy on the
grounds of an elite girl’s school. It’s a year later and the cold case is
reopened after Det. Moran receives an unexpected clue. A photograph is posted
on a board, “The Secret Place,” at the girl’s school which states, “I know who
killed him.”
The action takes place during one day in which the detectives
investigate, interview and exhaustively analyze clues. The narrative is
skillfully woven with flashbacks of the actual events leading up to the boy’s
murder. It gives a glimpse of the minutia of police work and the threading
together of information that goes into solving (hopefully) a crime. French’s
writing style, even while tackling a disturbing subject is achingly, poetically
beautiful.
The handling of the mystical connection of the girls is also stunningly
rendered, reminding the reader of those frightening, heady, wonderful and at
times grim, teenage years. The length of the novel seems to indicate the author’s
reluctance to leave the characters. We too, are left wanting to know what
happens in the future for these girls. If French stays true to form, we will
meet at least some of them again.
Recommend.
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