This 2020 novel is the first of Tana French's post Dublin Murder Squad mysteries, all of which were good. One of the blurbs on the jacket cover speculates that it's "perhaps her best" or somesuch. I dunno about that. I am still partial to her very first novel, Into the Woods.
But I've yet to read a book of hers that hasn't been worth reading, and this was my fifth. More than most, perhaps, this one is about the characters. Quite often the mystery plot functions as a scaffold which allows the author to galavant around a city and parade its types and milieux. Raymond Chandler looms largest amongst books, whereas every single Masterpiece Mystery series seems dedicated to the television equivalent of letting viewers have a good palate-cleansing Sunday evening trip to verdant old England before saddling back up for a week of work.
There's a touch of this in French's novels, particularly in this one, where a retired US cop repairs to the Irish countryside to get away from it all, only to discover that just when he thought he'd made his way out of the mire of criminality, they pull him back in. But more than anything it's about him, his relationship to a broken family, and the process of starting anew.
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