Book review: Faithful Place by Tana French

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Faithful Place by Tana French

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Tana French takes on Frank Mackey in her third outing with the Dublin Murder Squad. Mackey, as you may recall, is with the Undercover division of the Dublin police department, and takes his responsibilities as the coordinator of undercover operations and operatives very seriously. In Faithful Place, however, his work gets shunted aside as he is sucked back into his old neighborhood to deal with family drama and his own history.

At 19, Frank was prepared to run away to London with Rosie Daly, the love of his life, and together take the music world by storm. But she never appeared for their rendezvous and, although Frank himself left the neighborhood soon after, he never left Dublin. He never heard from Rosie again. Frank spent many years wondering where she was, imagining her life, while he married and had a child and divorced and built his career with the Dublin police, and eventually stopped wondering. Then one day, his sister calls to say the wreckers had found Rosie's suitcase in an abandoned house on their street, and would he please come back home to help them decide what to do.

Frank, desperate to know what happened to Rosie, allows himself to be pulled back into the sick family dynamic he fled more than 20 years previously. And, try as he might against it, he easily falls into the old pattern of family interaction as if he'd never left. Ah, Irish guilt. Nothing like it. As he investigates the discovery of the suitcase and comes to a conclusion about what really happened to Rosie, Frank struggles also to deal with the legacy of his family and his neighborhood: the reputation, the history, the neighbors, the bad blood...so much bad blood.

With Faithful Place, Tana French again creates a taut mood and tight story, and three-dimensional characters who live and breathe and bleed and grieve. Wonderful stuff. I can't wait for the next book.



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