Readers of this blog will be aware that Tana French is one of my favourite crime writers and much of what I love about her is here in this novel. Her body is discovered in short time and the usual investigative process begins, a process which – officially – Frank has no part in. The suitcase had belonged to Rose Daly, Frank’s girlfriend, who had been planning on eloping with Frank on the night she disappeared. This particular case is a cold one: a suitcase belonging to a girl who went missing twenty previously is uncovered and handed over to Frank Mackey’s estranged family, who contacted him about it. Both these detectives have cameos in Faithful Place and it felt a little like the falling into place of a jigsaw puzzle as I was reading this one! Having read these a little out of sequence, I know that French returns more fully to the Murder Squad detectives ‘Scorcher’ Kennedy and Stephen Moran in Broken Harbour and The Secret Place respectively. Mackey returns as the narrator in this, the third novel, but his role is non-professional, personal and familial. In The Woods, the first novel, centred on it but the follow-up The Likeness, centred on Cassie Madox from the first book who is now in Domestic Violence rather than murder and being supervised by Frank Mackey from Undercover. Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series is a delight, but has sometimes only vague connections to the eponymous Murder Squad.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |