3.5 stars. The Secret Place was somewhat of a departure for Tana French. I’m not sure if it was quite as successful for me personally, but it makes me really happy to know she’s experimenting and keeping things fresh. She could just churn out novels and people would read them even with diminishing returns at this point. It makes me love her all the more to know that she has no intention of phoning it in. Detective Stephen Moran is surprised one morning to see […]
I don’t even know why I was surprised that I liked this so much
4.5 stars. I honestly didn’t expect to like this book much when I found out it was centered on Scorcher Kennedy, a massive annoyance in the French’s last book, Faithful Place. Kennedy cares a lot about how he is perceived and can come off a little strong and brash. To my surprise, this was my favorite Dublin Murder Squad book so far. I’d never want to be friends with Detective Kennedy, but he’s a great character to read about and the mystery was fascinating. A […]
Move over Sherlock Holmes
3.5 stars. This was a good, solid mystery book. In a way, it’s Sherlock Holmes fanfiction reclaiming the original series for women (in a similar way that Elementary the tv series functions). Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories are classics for a reason, but the casual sexism is undeniable and for a modern reader like myself, it can be hard to swallow, “the woman” Irene Adler or no. The Beekeeper’s apprentice examines what it would be like if an older Sherlock had a female protege. Holmes meets […]
Triple Cannonballing with Tana French
It’s almost ridiculous how easy she makes it look, writing a book this good. I don’t even know what to say anymore about her books. They are all just so, so good. And the way she jumps from character to character each book gives her room to play around with different structures and themes, and yet still stay within the framework of a murder mystery novel. I love murder mystery novels, but I don’t love these books because of the mysteries (although I don’t think […]
A good, warm Poirot to listen to on a cold, wintery day.
So I’m going to confess up front that I did a very bad thing. When I got about halfway through this, I decided it would be a great idea to spoil myself completely on the ending. I don’t know why I do this. It’s like once a mystery’s got me, I can’t even wait five minutes to find out how it turns out. Wikipedia and the Internet are terrible enablers in this habit of mine. And yes, I’ve done it before, though never to a […]
Roaring 20’s urban fantasy
The first two (and the only ones so far published) books in the Diviners series are genre-bending, spooky young adult mysteries with tons of characters in intersecting stories, all set during the roaring twenties and featuring tons of historical flourishes. I am incredibly lazy and struggling to write reviews right now, so I’m leaning on Goodreads for these plot descriptions: The Diviners (3.5 stars) — “Evie O’Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York […]
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