Tana French's sixth novel, The Trespasser, revisits the burgeoning careers of Dublin Murder Squad Detectives Antoinette Conway and Stephen Moran, introduced in The Secret Place. As atmospheric and intricate as French's past work, this engrossing mystery succeeds in both style and plot. Fans and new readers alike will be captivated.
Conway and Moran are partners now, and in the opening pages, they are assigned what looks like yet another boring domestic homicide: a beautiful young woman has been killed, apparently in a fit of passion during a romantic dinner at home. A little too perfect, she "looks like Dead Barbie," and her apartment "like it was bought through some Decorate Your Home app." But most disturbingly, Conway is sure she's seen the vic somewhere before. As the case unfolds, the partners find wider-reaching connections than they'd bargained for.
French's fans will recognize the hallmarks of her mystery novels: intense interior struggles; a potent undercurrent of class tensions; a case that appears to have a mind of its own; and a victim whose personality haunts those who are seeking justice. French offers layers of possible betrayal, hypothetical events and convoluted stories, even an upheaval in Conway's private life that echoes an element of the case at hand. More than 400 pages pass by almost without blinking, as The Trespasser's momentum presses forward to a finish that staggers Conway and Moran as much as it does the reader. This is a complex, compulsively readable novel; French keeps getting better and better. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia