The Secret Place
by Tana French
3 Stars

A murder mystery, written to a formula, that holds little surprises.

This story focuses on Detective Stephen Moran who for years has been investigating the murder of a boy years ago. Holley Mackey turns up seven years after the murder with a photo of the boy saying I know who killed him. What follows is a mystery to discover the truth.

I found the story line predictable, following a well-trodden script for mysteries. It lacked finesse.

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This title was provided by Netgalley and the publisher in return for an open and honest review.

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(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

The photo shows a boy who was murdered a year ago.
The caption says, 'I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM'.
Detective Stephen Moran last saw Holly Mackey when she was a nine-year-old witness to the events of Faithful Place. Now she's sixteen and she's shown up with a postcard and a story.
To solve this case Stephen will have to work with Detective Antoinette Conway - a prickly outsider. And he will have to disentangle the truth from Holly and her friends' secrets, even as he starts to suspect that the truth might be something he doesn't want to hear.

I have read a number of these Dublin Murder Squad books and was excited to see the 5th book in the series on Net Galley...

And it just wasn't quite as good as the previous ones.

But let's start with some positives:

The plot and mystery of this story were first rate. I am impressed by the lengths the author went to to lay her red herrings, the amount of twists and turns, and the final revelation...absolutely exquisite writing.

Add on top of that the pacing and abaility to ratchet up the tension in a split second - brilliant.

However, the biggest disapointment for me were the characters. They felt a bit flat. The narrator, Stephen, can only be described as boring. In the previous books I had read, the narrator had a characteristic that made them interesting. Stephen didn't. With that, we have the cliched "woman fighting against the men's club" character, and the over-written teen-girls, made to look extremely bitchy and wierd. Didn't sit quite right...

Overall, still a great mystery/detective novel - just felt let down by the characterisations.


Paul
ARH