From the book cover:
The photo on the card shows a boy who was found murdered, a year ago, on the grounds of a girls' boarding school in the leafy suburbs of Dublin. The caption says I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM.
Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to get a foot in the door of Dublin's Murder Squad–and one morning, sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey brings him this photo. "The Secret Place," a board where the girls at St. Kilda's School can pin up their secrets anonymously, is normally a mishmash of gossip and covert cruelty, but today someone has used it to reignite the stalled investigation into the murder of handsome, popular Chris Harper. Stephen joins forces with the abrasive Detective Antoinette Conway to find out who and why.
Stephen takes the information to Conway in the Murder Squad, who was the primary on the case the year before. They immediately go to St. Kilda's, and start interviewing the girls who had access to The Secret Place at the relevant time.
The action all takes place in one day. The story is told in alternating narratives. The first is in first person, from the point of view of Stephen Moran. The second narrative (in third person present tense) follows the eight girls, boarders at the school, in the year leading up to the crime and all the way up the point where Holly turns in the photo.
First I will start with what I liked about the book. I especially like the characters in French's books; sometimes it seems like the character exploration is just as important as solving the mystery. Most of the eight students that are important to the story are interesting. Scary kids, not what I remember teenage girls being like when I was in a very non-posh high school in Alabama (in the 1960s), but still interesting. Miss McKenna, headmistress of the school, is a good character. Her primary concern is the reputation of the school, and she is having a very bad day. We don't see a lot of her, but she is important to the plot.
The depiction of the two detectives is very well done. Stephen Moran is the narrator of the portion of the story about the investigation and the interrogations. We know about his goals, his fears, and his good and bad points (at least from his point of view). The reader knows less about Antoinette Conway because we are getting only Stephen's assessment of her and the situation, but she is an intriguing character and she grew on me. And then there is Holly's father, Frank, a policeman in the Undercover Division, who becomes involved later in the story. He is quite a character.
The school setting is excellent. The school takes boarders, the girls board four to a room, and there are two sets of four very close friends that are under suspicion. The girls' families are mostly very well-to-do and the girls are used to getting what they want.
The rest of my comments are more neutral than negative...
I feel emotionally wrung out when I finish books by Tana French. The ending is usually a downer. The murder is solved, life goes on, but no one ends up happy at the end. That is OK now and then but I would not want a steady diet of that kind of reading.
This book was about 450 pages and took me five days to read. The pacing was good but I had to really focus to keep up with all the characters and the two alternating narratives.
I do have a bone to pick with the author related to the introduction of some supernatural elements that never seemed to go anywhere or fit into the book. That distracted me and nearly took me out the story completely. However, some readers liked that aspect a lot.
Yet, regardless of any criticisms I have, overall this was a good book, rewarding and with good character development. I liked it a lot. I think I would enjoy rereading this someday.
See Moira's review at Clothes in Books, John's review at Goodreads, Barbara Fister's review at Reviewing the Evidence.
This is my second read for Reading Ireland Month at Cathy's blog at 746books.
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Publisher: Viking, 2014
Length: 452 pages
Format: Hardcover
Series: Dublin Murder Squad
Setting: Dublin, Ireland
Genre: Police Procedural
Source: Purchased in August 2020.
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