Another Tana French novel I couldn’t stay away from. This one is about an undercover detective who gets emotionally involved in the case, which I always suspected, at least to some degree, that all detectives had to be emotionally involved with the victims as well as the suspects.

In the story, the young detective Cassandra Murdoch (Cassie) is called to see a dead body, which is the exact likeness of herself. Cassie is having some kind of an occupational crisis and she has left the murder squad and is working in domestic violence, but she is a good undercover and her old boss together with her boyfriend Sam in the murder squad call her to ask her to the task, as the deceased has taken Cassie’s old undercover name Lexie Madison and has been living in a house with four other young college students.

As the result of her old boss Frank Mackey’s machinations, although Sam is worried about Lexie’s safety, Cassie accepts the job and begins living with the others as Lexie who actually survived the attack, while she acts as if her memory is damaged and she doesn’t recall how the stabbing happened and who did it.

To do this, Lexie is wired and has a gun. From outside, Frank listens in to what happens in the house. Then, each night Lexie/Cassie takes a walk in the dark to talk to Frank and/or Sam on her cellphone, since it used to be Lexie’s habit to take such walks alone because that was the only time she had some privacy for the reason that the group was so tight-knit that nobody could do anything alone without being discovered.

As Cassie gets to know the four friends, however, she begins liking them and some kind of loyalty to them takes hold inside her. Who was Lexie in real life, who murdered her, and is the murderer one of the young people in the house? Add to this, the local town’s resentment of these young people, the plot takes many turns and twists.

Many a renowned writer would envy this author for putting together all this so expertly and creating strong emotions as well, especially because this is a murder-mystery story involving an undercover detective. Yet the undercover detective is swayed with human thoughts and feelings and is not far from being impressed with what happens around her.

As the narrator of the story, Cassie is a complex yet sympathetic and very believable protagonist.

The suspense in the book is unimaginable as the reader together with Cassie gets to know the other four friends and hopes the murderer is not among them, but that he came from outside. This part of the puzzle together with the reason for the attack, however, the readers will have to find out on their own, and that is where the real story is.

Although not a fan of the murder/mystery genre, this is the fourth book I have read by Tana French within a short time, although her books are relatively long. This one is probably the shortest with 419 pages, and I just can’t wait to read the rest of her work.

learning what can be done even with the driest of the genres

who Cassie is.

read still more books by Tana French.

empathy for all the characters in the story.

is Tana French, the author of In the Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, The Secret Place, The Trespasser and The Witch Elm. Her books have won awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and Barry Awards, the Los Angeles Times Award for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Dublin with her family.

whether you are a fan of the murder/mystery genre or not, this book stands on its own with its precise insight into all the characters and the plot itself, becoming a human story instead of a suspenseful murder mystery.

Superb story, slow-burning and so human, yet the suspense never stops! At one point, I couldn't tell where Cassie was. She really became Lexie. It was difficult for me as a reader to know which one began and which one ended as it was for the character herself, although what Frank Mackey (the logic in character form) suspected all along became the truth.

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Created Jun 25, 2019 at 2:03pm • Submit your own review...