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Damn, 2014 seems so far away… :( I am pretty excited to hear that we will be seeing Frank again, I love him. Now all I really need is that Tana finally decides to bring back Rob and Cassie (preferably together) so they can make up :).
A boy is found murdered on the grounds of a girl's school. One year later, Holly Mackey drops a photograph into the lap of Stephen Moran, a Cold Case cop in Dublin, indicating someone at St. Kilda's knows who the killer was. He takes the photograph to the Murder Squad and gets paired with Detective Conway. Will this be Moran's big chance at getting on the Murder Squad or will the case tear him apart?The Secret Place is Tana French's fifth entry in the Dublin Murder Squad books and the last to da...
I’m a fan of Tana French but I don’t seem to read her books as often as I’d like. After months, this one became available from the library as an audio book. Stephen Moran gets his chance to join the Dublin Homicide squad when a young girl shows up with a clue concerning the murder of a teenage boy the year prior. The book gives us two alternative story lines. Steven’s present day story as he works with Antoinette Conway. And then the historical view of the students of a posh girls’ boarding scho...
This was the first Tana French book that I didn't love wholeheartedly. I still liked the murder mystery, which is set at a preppy girls school, but the abundance of teen speak made this a less satisfying read.I did like the introduction of Detective Antoinette Conway (who becomes the focus of book 6, "The Trespasser") and her earnest young partner, Stephen Moran. The pair have a good chemistry and it was fun to see them adjust to working together.My minor complaint about the dialogue in this boo...
Tana French finds new ways to dazzle and impress me with the fifth Dublin Murder Squad novel. Readers familiar with Faithful Place will remember Holly Mackey, daughter of Frank Mackey, and Dublin Police floater Stephen Moran. Seven years later, Moran is now working on Cold Cases and receives an unlikely visit from Holly, who is now sixteen and enrolled at St. Kilda's, an all-girls boarding school. Holly explains that the school has a wall where students can post anonymous comments about their li...
Here’s how I imagine it went down:French and her besties are at their high school reunion weekend. They’re sitting around drinking wine and reminiscing when someone decides to pull out the old ouija board from the attic storage. Much to their surprise, they channel Agatha Christie’s voice from Cat Among the Pigeons Flush with success, they try again, and discover Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes ( my review).Alright; maybe I just have my own upcoming reunion on my mind. But I was
Who killed him? Well, I guessed pretty early on whodunnit (though it wasn't blindingly obvious) there WERE plenty of distractions to divert us along the way, although I got the motive wrong, so not that smart after all eh? HIM being a teenage boy found dead in the grounds of St Kilda's boarding school for girls, situated in a leafy suburb of Dublin. There are eight teenage girls in the frame, and any one of the little monsters ( sorry, teens ) could have been responsible for his death. The quest...
OMG, it was like HELLO? who killed Chris?Tana French is the coolest writer this side of anywhere and her fifth entry in her fabulously well to do Dublin Murder Squad is the best one yet. Somehow, her writing just keeps getting better.Detective Stephan Moran, from Faithful Place, and Holly Mackey, Frank Mackey’s daughter and also from Faithful Place, make this hypnotic and leaves the reader unwilling to put it down.The relentless action begins when the picture of a murdered teenage boy is left on...
I'm over this series.I keep slugging through these books, hoping and hoping that the next one will finally be great, and with every single one I'm let down and disappointed. Worst of all, I keep thinking about all the other books I'd prefer to be reading. Ok, I think my rant is over.Another case, another murder for the Dublin Murder Squad- this one brings back a few familiar faces with Det. Stephen Moran and Holly Mackey- the spry teenager whose father Frank Mackey was the lead detective in a pr...
Detective Frank Mackey had been Detective Stephen Moran’s boss at one stage, so when he was confronted with Mackey’s sixteen year old daughter Holly at the station, he wasn’t sure why she was there, or what she wanted of him. Holly had been a material witness for Moran some years previously and he hadn’t seen her since then. But Holly had a photo to give to Stephen Moran – a photo of Chris Harper who had been murdered at St Kilda, Holly’s school, a year ago – on it was stuck letters which appear...
1,5 STARSI had hopes of continuing the "high" after reading Tana French's previous book, Broken Harbor, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... which I really liked...but sadly no......The Secret Place, 5th in her Dublin Murder Squad Series...was a total not hit but a total MISS...This was a cold case....the Murder Square had not been able to solve the murder of a boy, whose body had been found in the grounds of an all girl's private school.A year later, new evidence comes up in the form of a c...
EDIT - After giving this more thought, I have had to admit that this was a miss by Tana French's high standards. The fact is, even though it was not nearly as good as her other work, it was still great. If this were the first Tana French novel you were to read, you would not get the true Tana French experience. I have reduced my rating by 1 Star.Posted to The Literary Lawyer.ca Bronze Gavel for Best Novel of 2014 My #9 Read of 2014 A Rare but Excellent Miss - 4 Stars I have not hidden
okay. so let me get the bad news out of the way. this book has disrupted my opinion-based observation that every single tana french book has been better then the one that came before. which is probably for the best - it was starting to feel downright witchy, her powers, and it is an impossible thing to sustain, this exponential improvement from book to book. having said that, this book is still absolutely amazing and riveting and everything you want out of a literary crime novel. this woman is a...
Giving this book a 2 breaks my heart. The Dublin Squad series by Tana French is among my top 2 mystery series of all time, and I've loved every book in the series - except for this one.The magic is gone.The writing in this book lacks the sparkle of the previous ones. It may be that the main character, Detective Stephen Moran, is particularly dull. The previous narrators have all absorbed me into their story, they all had such personality. Rob is tragic. Cassie is strong. Mackey a tough son of a
"If I've learned one thing today, it's that teenage girls make Moriarty look like a babe in the woods." Tana French takes on the world of teenage girls. This book was 100% worth waiting for and, though I've loved all of French's mysteries, I think this could actually be my favourite. It was just so wonderful to get back into a book full of great characterisation, intricate relationships, clever red herrings and a writing style that so wholly fits my tastes. French writes the only kind of leng
“This has nothing to do with what anyone else in all the world would approve or forbid. This is all their own.” Reducing Tana French's books to a simple concept of "murder mysteries" would be like describing Anna Karenina as "that story about the train". I called them "intense psychological f*ckeries" before, and that also is not enough. I just don't know how to express my admiration for her skills in weaving bright and intricate and yet subtle relationship webs based in brilliant clever char
the thing that makes this story so unique is that it investigates a cold case. im pretty sure every single crime mystery/thriller ive read was about an active investigation, so the fact that this deals with an old unsolved murder and gives a different crime perspective was really exciting for me. again, true to TF style, this installment has a very character driven narrative. while the crime is the centre of the story, its how the characters and their actions are written that makes this compelli...
Almost a 3 star rating! I liked the detectives! And, I wanted to know who the killer was, so I HAD to keep reading.However, "The Secret Place" is NOT as good as 'ALL' other Tana French books. If you're a HUGE TANA FRENCH FAN (as I am) ---You might be disappointed in this book.If you've never read Tana French before, do not start with this one. I managed to enjoy this book *enough* --(in spite of so much tedious teen -adolescent- 'lingo').'Sometimes I felt, Tana French was pretty good giving a vo...
Few other books have conjured up the ghost of my teenage years as successfully as this one, dredged up the hazy remembrance of that first, most agonizing heartbreak, the subsequent amateurish cynicism summoned up to preclude the hassle of emotional hangups and the feeling of having only just the foggiest notion of how the world works.It is awe-inspiring how Tana French continues to incorporate such authentic sociocultural commentary into narratives which are usually taken to be written for the s...
I received a copy of this book from Goodreads-giveaways and I wish I could have given it a better rating alas I was very disappointed.Sadly I only managed to read 160 of the 518 pages in 12 days as I had got to the point that I couldn't bear to pick the book up to continue.I previously read Broken Harbour and really liked it awarding it four stars.In my opinion this novel is tedious, the characters easily forgettable, empty and shallow, hence I do not know who killed him and I don't want to know...