This is the third novel in Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series. I read the first two, In the Woods and The Likeness, a while ago and then decided to take a break. I found both novels to be too long, with pacing problems that hampered my enjoyment of the story, as well as finding the plot of the second novel too unlikely to really buy into. French’s novels are not typical mystery novels, or detective novels, or police procedurals per se. To me, they feel more like literary fiction centered around murders. French is more interested in trauma, family history, identity and other literary themes than she is in constructing a puzzle for the reader to work through. There’s nothing wrong with that approach and many people love her works, but for people accustomed to more tried-and-true detective fiction it can be an unwelcome departure.
One aspect of the Dublin Murder Squad series I have found interesting is it’s switching of protagonists. Here, our narrator and lead investigator is Det. Frank Mackey of the Undercover Squad. He had a minor role in The Likeness but takes over the story here, in a case that stretches back to his young life in a rough part of Dublin.
At 19, Frank thought he’d found the love of his life in Rose Daly, a girl from the neighborhood who knew all about his “colorful” family and didn’t mind one bit, because she also wanted to get as far away from hers as she could. They made plans to sail away to England together, get jobs, get married, and live happily ever after. But Rose didn’t show. For 22 years Frank took the note he found as proof that she’d gone off without him, never to be heard from again.
So when her suitcase and, eventually, her body, are discovered in a crumbling abandoned house at number 16 Faithful Place, the block where Frank and Rose grew up, Frank is forced to deal with his family, childhood friends, and neighbors for the first time in over two decades if he wants any answers. He has to deal also with the fact that his status as a cop will earn him no new friends, while his personal connection to the case means the police don’t want him hanging around either.
Frank’s investigation occurs alongside his efforts to keep his nine-year-old daughter Holly from being influenced (or corrupted) by his troublesome clan. Even on Faithful Place, the Mackeys have a bad reputation, largely brought about by Frank’s father’s drunkenness and violent temper. As he tries to navigate these complicated waters, he finds himself stretching further and further into ethical gray areas.
Frank Mackey is a compelling character, and the case is also intriguing. The problem is the same one I’ve encountered in the other Dublin Murder Squad books: it’s too long. Faithful Place doesn’t have enough actual mystery surrounding the identity of the killer to sustain it’s length of over 400 pages. It also solves the case quite a while before the last page, rendering the last stretch quite a slog, with multiple endings to test the reader’s patience.
