Tag: frank mackey

Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad #3) by Tana French

Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad #3) by Tana French

Faithful Place is a mystery and the backstory of Frank Mackey, the undercover agent readers first met in The Likeness.

Honestly, I didn’t like him, as a character, very much in the last book. This installment gave me understanding about why he’s so gruff and generally unkind. A difficult and abusive childhood has taken its toll on him.

There’s also the small matter of a broken heart over his teenage sweetheart, who never showed up the night they were going to run away together.

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“The night faded to a thin sad gray and round the corner a milk cart clattered over cobblestones towards the dairy, and I was still waiting for Rosie Daly at the top of Faithful Place.” pg 13, ebook

But it turns out, Frank’s past isn’t as straight forward as all that. And that’s what he discovers in this book.

“No matter how good you are, this world is always going to be better at this game. It’s more cunning than you are, it’s faster and it’s a whole lot more ruthless. All you can do is try to keep up, know your weak spots and never stop expecting the sucker punch.” pg 14, ebook

The Dublin Murder Squad series continues to surprise me with how much I enjoy it. Tana French is a master at building suspense throughout the stories. Her world doesn’t get stale because you (at least so far) follow a different character in each tale, learning a bit more about them, and then moving on to the next character.

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“I was right to enjoy the normal world while I had it. Deep down, even while I was shaking my fist at the sky and vowing never to darken the cobbles of that hellhole again, I must have known the Place was going to take that as a challenge.” pg 141, ebook

French manages to convey visceral and surprising emotions in her stories, which I love. It makes the hair raise on my arms and gives me goosebumps. I find myself thinking about key plot points when I wake up in the middle of the night, wondering what’s going to happen next. Not many books have that effect on me.

Her characters are complex. They’re not angels, but they’re not demons. They’re something in between, very human, and they feel completely real.

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“If you don’t know this by now, mate, you’d better write it down and learn it by heart: the right thing is not always the same as what’s in your pretty little rule book.” pg 158, ebook

And there’s always a moment in her novels, or sometimes two moments, that flips the story on its head. In this one, when that moment came, I had to read the passage twice and I even said aloud, “You’re kidding, right?”

Now, you don’t know this about me, but I am a completely silent reader. I never talk to the books. French has made me into one of “those” readers — a talking reader. That’s a pretty big deal.

Recommended for readers who like their mysteries to be thrilling and books that draw you in so much that you forget the real world for a time.

Thanks for reading!

The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad, #2) by Tana French

The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad, #2) by Tana French

Tana French’s second book in The Dublin Murder Squad series packs a serious punch. Cassie Maddox, a former murder squad detective, has moved to a different unit because of the stresses of the case called “Vestal Virgin” and personal difficulties with her former partner. She’s dragged back into the murder squad, when a woman’s body is found and she’s carrying identification showing her name is one of Cassie’s former undercover personas.

This is the main thing you need to know about Alexandra Madison: she never existed. Frank Mackey and I invented her, a long time ago, on a bright summer afternoon in his dusty office on Harcourt Street. pg 12, ebook.

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The slain woman has a unique living situation. She rooms with four other adults in a stately manor home called Whitethorn House. The group is a tightly-knit bunch of university students who not only live together, but also spend nearly every waking moment in each other’s company.

“Her main associates,” Sam said evenly, “were a bunch of other postgrads: Daniel March, Abigail Stone, Justin Mannering and Raphael Hyland.” pg 71

None of the group had a motive for killing Alexandra, whom they called Lexie. Or did they? Or perhaps it was someone outside the group, someone who had an old reason for hating them and the house. Or maybe it was a crime of opportunity… and who was Lexie Madison anyway?

Cassie’s superiors ask her to use her physical similarity to the dead woman to infiltrate the group in an undercover operation to try to dig up some answers. Can she pull it off? And, if she does, will whoever attacked Lexie come at her again?

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“This is the part I didn’t tell Sam: bad stuff happens to undercovers. A few of them get killed. Most lose friends, marriages, relationships. A couple turn feral, cross over to the other side so gradually that they never see it happening till it’s too late…” pg 62, ebook.

The tension throughout this entire book is incredible. I noticed the same thing with French’s other book, In the Woods. She really has a way of building the story up through complex layers and then delaying the big reveal to pour on the stress.

The characters are fantastic. The conversations are dances, setting up further plot points.

“She’s fine,” said Abby. “She just said so.” “I’m only asking. The police kept saying—” “Don’t poke at it.” “What?” I asked. “What did the police keep saying?” “I think,” Daniel said, calmly but finally, turning in his chair to look at Justin, “that we should leave it at that.”

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I had to suspend my disbelief at a couple points in the story. The big one was believing that Cassie looked enough like the dead woman to make the undercover part even possible. I suppose I’ve heard stories about doppelgangers, but I’ve never truly believed such a thing actually exists.

Highly recommended for readers who like their mysteries with a heaping side dish of tension.

Thanks for reading!