Why? There is little action in this novel. If you want to sample the Dublin Murder Squad, better to start with “Faithful Place” or “Broken Harbour.”Īnne Payne organizes the Jax Freestyle Book Club for Real Readers at novel in the Tana French series about Irish murder detective Antoinette Conway is universally loved and considered among her best in a long line of terrific mystery novels.

The portrayal of intra-squad workplace politics is another series strength that is on special display.įor an established fan of the series, this is a worthwhile entry. “The Trespasser” has distinct virtues: it excels at using formal and informal police interrogations to both play into the developing plot and provide backstory. What happens during the interval between the mystery being set in motion and the much later acceleration toward resolution isn’t wasted it does advance the plot and contributes to eventual illumination. Conway and her partner, who irritates her by his tendency toward speculating in directions that lead away from their person of interest, are stalled and stymied for many pages. Hints of other possibilities sputter and fizzle. With his absolute non-history of physical violence and no hint of a motive, it’s apparent to the reader if not always to the detectives that there’s a more complicated story out there. The evidence, none of it physical, points to a man who had been moving from repeat date to boyfriend status at the time of her death. She has left few clues as to her actual personality, as distinct from her generically polished look. The sixth book in the series, it is kept out of the top tier by the overly long stretch of chapters spent before the murder under investigation becomes a compelling mystery.Ī pretty young woman dies from a violently inflicted head injury. “The Trespasser,” as told by Detective Antoinette Conway, a diligent investigator with a chip on her shoulder, is a solid psychological procedural with a deep sense of Irish place.

French makes her complex plots reasonably plausible by grounding the characters’ actions in their personal histories. Each entry in Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series is primarily or completely from the point of view of a detective on the squad, and in each book the murder under investigation has a connection to, or some resonance with, that detective’s life.

The trespasser tana french review