Tana French’s The Secret Place Will Lose You in a Thick, Irish (Teenage) Fog
Sometimes there’s nothing better than cozying up with a big, juicy thriller that sets your heart racing. Tana French fans know the famed Irish mystery novelist will never disappoint readers looking for an intoxicating narrative filled with multifaceted characters and layers of intrigue. In her latest, The Secret Place, French pulls the reader through a foggy mess of teenage deception and murder, bringing back some beloved characters from her Dublin Murder Squad stories and introducing some new ones, too.
French fans will be pleased to see the return of Detective Stephen Moran, whom we met in French’s earlier novel, Faithful Place. This time, Moran’s career needs some life breathed into it, so he’s somewhat pleased when teenager Holly Mackey, murder investigator Frank Mackey’s daughter, who was a tiny girl clinging to a doll in Faithful Place, approaches him with a clue from a crime that took place a year earlier. Popular teen Chris Harper was found murdered on the campus of Holly’s elite all-girl’s boarding school, St. Kilda’s, and nobody was able to find out who was behind it. Now, as Holly offers Moran the clue—a photo of Chris with a note that says “I know who killed him,” which was left on a confessional bulletin board in the school where girls can leave anonymous messages—Moran knows he has a chance to impress his superiors if he can crack this case and join the murder squad, as he’s always wanted. This includes wooing the particularly stodgy Antoinette Conway, the case’s lead detective.
Moran has basically narrowed down the suspect list to two warring groups of teenage girls. The problem is, the girls have woven a complicated web of gossip, jealousy, love, friendship, adolescent hysteria, and teenspeak for Moran to navigate. (Oh, the teenspeak! It plops you right into the center of the girls’ quick-paced conversations!) Their stories often change after the first, second, and third rounds of questioning, and their ever-evolving relationships with each other and their classmates are not what you expect. I could never tell whether they were being evil geniuses and totally pulling the wool over my eyes (and Moran’s), ten steps ahead of the investigation, or if they were truly as clueless as they pretended to be. Unsettling!
The book, which takes place in one day, jumps back and forth from the murder investigation to Chris Harper’s last days, weeks, and months, so we’re able to get a sense of the emotions and social pacts keeping some of these girls together and pushing some of them apart, as well as an understanding of which of them have something to hide when it comes to Chris Harper. Which faction (both somewhat despisable) is innocent? Are any of the girls telling the truth? Who’s defending whom? Who was smart enough to do this? Who had a reason to? With these wicked girls, Moran finds, it’s more complicated than solving who, what, where, when, or why. One must dig much deeper than that, particularly when Holly’s father, Frank, shows up on the scene, determined to protect his daughter, yet holding the fate of Moran’s career in the palm of his hand.
A supernatural element keeps the narrative feeling as dreamy and confounding as a thick Irish fog, and French manages to convey a foreboding feeling that something very, very bad is about to happen at every turn. Every time you think the dust is about to settle, she rips away a bit of the solid ground you’re standing on, ensuring that you’re never at rest, or even at a point where you feel you can put the book down.
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