Hachette Books Ireland The Secret Place

Seek out mysteries set in the "foggy dew" of Britain and EXPECT lots of twists and female detectives like Emma Peel- classy and gutsy. She is a good writer- you might just need a dictionary and you never go "that's it?"- I recommend her to anybody who likes a good read that moves along but has food for thought- people are complex and too often a mystery promises twists and great characters- Dickensian is used too much- but Ms. French delivers!

I absolutely love Tana French's books and couldn't wait to read this one. It's actually quite different from her others, despite Stephen Moran being in it. I think it's due to the fact that it's set in a private boarding school and in one day which makes it feel very confined and a bit of an anomaly in French's ouvre. But it's still a fantastic read. What did I like? It's so well written that you just sail along, immersed in the story and obviously the mystery of who killed Chris Harper. These girls twist and turn so much in their reluctant answering of the detectives' interviews that you just never know where you are or what happened. You really feel the frustration of the police. Stephen smooth transition to a new type of detective to interview each girl, the best fit to get the most out of the witness is masterly and accomplished. And even though it's a big book, it never drags and each page takes you a little further into the mystery. I particularly enjoyed the flashbacks that reveal the story at the same pace as the detectives in the present uncover the truth. What didn't I like? Hmmm. Sometimes the girls speak like teenage cliches. Sometimes their dialogue lacks subtlety, which French is normally a master of. It's like the worst stereotype you can imagine, that you have never actually heard but just exaggerate. I cringed. The supernatural element. Very odd indeed. I won't go further on that - you can see for yourself. That all said, it was a great read - not a patch on French's other books - but one for a winter night.

si legge una pagina dietro l'altra, ma l'atmosfera densa di cattiveria, complotti, bugie e di (quasi) invalicabile muro di omertà tra i protagonisti disturba un po'.

In Tana French’s The Secret Place, a high school freshman-aged schoolgirl plots and commits the violent murder of a victim whose identity she learns only as she strikes. This police procedural unravels her means and opportunity easily, but the author needs hundreds of pages to barely convince us she had a motive. Men will have a problem understanding more than half the pages of this book, as they detail in unfamiliar schoolgirl jargon a world of feelings and relationships quite foreign to the average guy. It’s a relief, therefore, each time the author switches to the dialogue and world of the detectives Moran and Conway––the grown-up world. Indeed, the successful technique of this novel is the author’s contrasting the adolescent and grown-up worlds. French explains it beautifully in the thoughts dawning on the murderer-to-be: “…real isn’t what they try to tell you. Time isn’t. Grown-ups hammer down all these markers, bells schedules coffee-breaks, to stake down time so you’ll start believing it’s something small and mean, something that scrapes flake after flake off of everything you love till there’s nothing left; to stake you down so you won’t lift off and fly away, somersaulting through whirlpools of months, skimming through eddies of glittering seconds, pouring handfuls of hours over your upturned face.” No wonder this young girl has a calligraphied 17th century poem on her wall: “Love cares not how the world is turn’d.” Four girls boarding at school have a special bond and special moments that must be eternally meaningful. This one girl secretly tattoos herself to mark each special secret they share. This friendship gives them the power to control and even burst light bulbs, it must be sacred. And that’s it, the motive. Preserving what these four share is so mystically imperative that a sixteen-year-old boy who threatens it must die, and he does. In a sort of epilogue, the author has one girl’s mother reconnect with her school girl friends after thirty years. She attended the same school, and the friend produces a picture to confirm it all. How Mom behaves in front of the daughter only reinforces her belief that what she and her pals have is special: “They are forever, a brief and mortal forever, a forever that will grow into their bones and be held inside them after it ends, intact, indestructible.” Interfering is a motive for murder. The reader may be skeptical, but the author gilds it with moment after special moment, and in the end gives us a great “solve” while pushing the motive to the background. In the post-McBain world, cell phones have at first peeked and then fully arrived in all police procedurals. Cell phones, now smart phones, are as integral a part of today’s stories as horses were in a Max Brand western. In this novel, however, the smart phone is the magic time machine that allows the author to cram a full year of life into the single day Moran and Conway spend at St. Kilda’s School. There are contemporary sub-plots in the today of the book: Conway’s place in the Murder squad, Moran’s ambition and his budding new partnership, Mackey’s protective interference, but the real action takes place in cell phone linked events. The reader even has to follow a three ball Monte-like switcheroo of the phones. Oddly then, in this techno world, the author introduces the plot with an old-fashioned, cut-and-paste postcard clue supposedly appearing on the school’s “Secret Place” bulletin board. And even more retro, the "solve” depends solidly on the appearance of a ghost. The author seems to have put her tongue in cheek writing a very technically current story, while still paying homage to the traditions of her chosen vocation. In the first and last pages of the book there’s a background, mind-soundtrack song playing for Holly. The lyrics can’t be found at Google, unlike the poem, and so must be the author’s way of tying things together in affirmation: “Never thought that everything we’d lost could feel so near.” Like all her previous books, The Secret Place is a terrific read and continues Tana French’s trajectory toward membership in the honors circle of mystery writers. A first book Edgar is tough to follow, but she’s done quite well with subsequent efforts, including The Secret Place.

A deeply-layered and enjoyable mystery. Adds to, but doesn't depend on, the other Dublin Murder Squad books. Fans of the series should enjoy this, very much!