This year I decided to go back to some of the series I started but never finished and give them one more try.
Series: Dublin Murder Squad. I last read this series in 2013.
What I remember about the series prior to this book: I remember being disappointed that the protagonists of In the Woods and The Likeness were absent from the following books. I remember disliking the loose ends in In the Woods and thinking that the setup for The Likeness was beyond ludicrous. I don’t remember much of anything about the other two books.
Why I stopped reading the series: These books always held my interest, but they gave me bad dreams and they’re super depressing.
The plot: Detective Stephen Moran (who was apparently in a previous book, although I don’t remember him) works Cold Cases and one day Holly, the daughter of another detective (Frank Mackey, the main character in Book 3), approaches him with a card which indicates that someone at her boarding school knows something about an unsolved murder that occurred at her school last year. Detective Moran and Detective Conway go to the school to investigate. The action takes place over a single day, as they interview students, and these chapters are interspersed with flashback chapters of Holly and her friends and their life prior to the murder.
The good: As with all Tana French books, I couldn’t put it down. She’s so good at writing a mystery that you HAVE to know more about. I figured out, fairly early on, who the murderer was, but it didn’t take away from the story. I still needed to know why, and how. This book contains some magical realism, and it seems like a lot of people on Goodreads really hated that, but in the context it didn’t bother me at all. The story is about friendships among teen girls–what is more magical than the friendships you have at that phase of your life? And these magical elements are only present in the girls’ chapters, not the ones narrated by the cops, so it felt clear–to me, at least–that these could be explained away in a non-magical manner to anyone outside looking in. The friendship among the main four girls felt so real, and I loved reading about teen girls who were true friends and didn’t secretly hate each other.
The bad: Moran is kind of a blank as a protagonist. The mean girl clique at Holly’s school is too mean to feel realistic. The way the teens talk to the adults is very, very bad. I read that French lurked on teen message boards and eavesdropped on teens at bus stations and stuff, so maybe it’s more realistic than it seems. I’m willing to believe teens today talk to each other like that–but not to adults.
Did The Secret Place change my opinion of the series?: No. This was a good book that was super depressing and gave me bad dreams. And I still miss Cassie.
Will I keep reading the series?: At this point there’s only one more Dublin Murder Squad book I haven’t read. I might, just for the sake of completion, but Tana French bums me out so it’ll probably be another 7 or 8 years til I get to it.
I was so happy to see the return of “magic” in this one; the potential supernatural moments in In the Woods were what hooked me in AND gave me bad dreams, haha.
Yes! I was surprised how much people seemed to hate it. To me it seemed to fit in perfectly with the story she was telling about the four girls. Plus her books are so eerie and creepy…a little supernatural element just makes them even more so.
The magical bits sound cool. I made my 2021 tbr and absolutely must read my copy of into the woods this year.
Plenty of almost-supernatural spookiness in that one. The Secret Place may be the one I liked best after In the Woods.
Teresa, you plan out your TBR list a whole year at a time?? I’m impressed! Do you usually stick with it?
Ha, not usually! I’m going for a full cannonball and want to stay focused this time around. I have a tendency to read 3-4 books at once and not finish them all. I also have so many on my own shelves including this Tana French that I desperately need to read. I’ve probably had it over five years.
I remember reading the first novel in this series and liking it, but it was so depressing that I never read anymore. I might have to pick it up again!
They’re all good, but they’re all depressing. I don’t think I could read more than one in a row for sure.
These books ARE depressing and normally I don’t like depressing things, but for some reason I eat her stuff up with a spoon and then ask for more.
I’m one of those people who didn’t really like the magical element, but only because I liked the ambiguity of the magical elements in books one, two, and four (none in book three for some reason, I guess Frank was just a bit of a mundane). And this felt way less ambiguous to me than those. It felt like actual magic, which felt out of place in the real world French otherwise created. I still really liked the book, though! I’m not mad about it or anything. What a weird thing to be mad about.
If you want to try out something less depressing of hers, her most recent book The Searcher is really great, and has probably the most optimistic ending I’ve seen from her yet.
Here to second The Searcher, and here to second the depressing stuff! I try to avoid it, but Tana French and Lauren Groff make me WANT to feel bad.